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Dessert

Cranberry Mold

A fruit preserve made from cranberries, water, apple, and sugar, boiled and set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cranberry Mold

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fruit

  1. In a pot, combine the cranberries and water.

  2. Boil until the skins of the cranberries burst.

  3. Press the mixture through a sieve.

Sweeten and mould

  1. Add the sugar and boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cranberries
Provide the tart flavour and colour, and their pulp thickens the mould as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness and helps the mixture set firm when cooled.

The step that matters

Boiling with the sugar. The 15-minute boil after adding sugar concentrates the sugar and the fruit's natural pectin, which lets the mixture gel when cooled. A shorter boil can leave the mould runny.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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