Why it works: Sugar and cranberry work together. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Cranberry Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Make the jelly
Prepare cranberry juice according to general directions.
Add 1 pound of sugar to every pint of juice and boil.
Skim off any foam that forms on the surface.
Test and pour
Test the jelly by dropping a little into cold water; it is done when it does not mingle with the water.
Before pouring the jelly, rinse glasses with cold water to prevent sticking.
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.
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Sugar + cranberrytop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Sweetens the jelly and helps it set into a firm gel as the mixture boils.
- Cranberry juice
- Forms the liquid base and supplies the pectin and acid needed for the jelly to set.
The step that matters
Testing for doneness with cold water. Jelly sets as it reaches a high enough sugar concentration and boils down. Judging by the cold-water test shows whether it has thickened enough. Stopping too early leaves a runny jelly, while cooking too long makes it stiff.
“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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