Skip to main content
Dessert

Cranberry Conserve

A sweet preserve made from cranberries, orange juice, sugar, raisins, nuts, and orange rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and nuts work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 490 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cranberry Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash the cranberries.

  2. Add water, orange juice and pulp, and raisins.

  3. Cook until the cranberries burst and are soft.

Sweeten and finish

  1. Add sugar and stir until dissolved.

  2. Skim off any foam when off the stove and add nuts.

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. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Orange + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Orange + nutstop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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
Bursting releases pectin and tartness, which thicken the preserve as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart cranberries and helps the preserve keep and set.
Oranges
Juice and pulp add acidity and citrus aroma that brighten the sweet fruit.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and body as they soften in the fruit.

The step that matters

Cook until the cranberries burst and are soft. Cranberries must be cooked fully before the sugar goes in. Bursting releases pectin, the natural setting agent that thickens the preserve. Undercooked berries stay firm, so the preserve will be thin and the texture uneven.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, raisin, nuts):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, nuts. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes