Why it works: Sugar and gooseberry work together. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 131 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Strawberry Jam
Ingredients
Directions
Combine strawberries and sugar in a pan and simmer until the sugar is dissolved.
Add gooseberry juice and boil quickly until the jam flakes when tested or a little sets on a plate.
Skim off any foam.
Allow to cool slightly.
Stir gently.
Fill into jars.
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 + gooseberrytop 25% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together131 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Strawberries
- Provide the main fruit flavour and bulk of the jam.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the jam and helps it set and preserve well.
- Gooseberry juice
- Adds natural pectin and acidity to help the jam set.
The step that matters
Boil quickly until the jam sets. Strawberries are low in pectin, so the jam must reach a high enough sugar concentration and temperature to gel. Overcooking can make it stiff and dull, while undercooking leaves it runny. Testing by flake or plate sets the endpoint.
“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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