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Dessert

Cranberry Jelly

A sweet preserve made from cranberries, raisins, water, and sugar.

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 ↓

Cranberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pick over and wash the cranberries.

  2. Seed the raisins and add them to the cranberries.

Make the jelly

  1. Add boiling water and boil for 20 minutes.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Add sugar to the pulp and cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Turn the mixture into a mold that has been wet with cold water.

  5. Chill and serve.

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
Provide the main fruit body and tart flavour, and their pectin helps the mixture set.
Raisins
Add sweetness and body to the fruit mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, when cooked, helps it thicken and hold its shape when chilled.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. Pressing the cooked fruit through a sieve removes skins and seeds, leaving a smooth pulp. Leftover skins or seeds would make the jelly gritty and uneven.

“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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