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Dessert

Mixed Jam

A jam made by boiling mixed currants, gooseberries, cherries, and plums with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and plum work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 255 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mixed Jam

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the fruit together for 30 minutes, with or without the stones.

  2. Add ½ pound of moist sugar for every pound of fruit and boil for another 30 minutes.

  3. Allow to cool and store in jars.

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. Currant + plumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Currants
Provide tartness and pectin that help the jam set.
Gooseberries
Contribute acidity and natural pectin for a firm set.
Cherries
Add body, flavour and natural sweetness to the jam.
Plums
Add pectin and fruit body to help the jam thicken.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps preserve it while it sets.

The step that matters

Boiling with the sugar for the second 30 minutes. Sugar and fruit pectin only gel properly when the mixture reaches a rolling boil and holds it. Boiling too briefly leaves the jam runny, while overcooking can darken and sour the flavour.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, sugar. 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.

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