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Dessert

Raisins and Cranberries

A preserve made by cooking cranberries and raisins with sugar and water until the berries break.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Raisins and Cranberries

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine cranberries, raisins, sugar, and water in a stone crock.

  2. Cook until the berries are well broken, stirring to prevent burning.

  3. Pour out to cool.

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 + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cranberries
Their pectin and tartness help the preserve thicken and balance the sweetness as they break down.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and body, and soften into the fruit as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps it set into a thick, spreadable texture as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Cook until the berries are well broken. Stirring prevents sugar and fruit from scorching on the bottom, and cooking long enough lets the pectin and sugar set the preserve. Undercooking leaves it 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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