Why it works: Sugar and red currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Cheeby Jam
Ingredients
Directions
Weigh the fruit before stoning and allow half the weight in sugar.
Stone the cherries and boil them in a preserving pan until nearly all the juice is dried up.
Add the crushed sugar and red currant juice, using 1 pint of juice for every 6 lbs of cherries and 1 lb of sugar for every pint of juice.
Boil all together until it jellies, stirring well and skimming as needed.
A few minutes before it's done, crack some of the stones and add the kernels for flavor.
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 + red curranttop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,156 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cherries
- Provide the main fruit body and most of the flavor of the jam.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps preserve the jam and set its texture.
- Red currant juice
- Adds acidity and natural pectin that help the jam set.
The step that matters
Boil until it jellies. Sugar, acid and pectin only set into a gel at the right concentration. Stopping too early leaves the jam runny, while boiling too long makes it stiff and dull.
“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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