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Dessert

English Guava

A preserve made from bullace and plum juice sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,313 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

English Guava

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Strip the stalks from the bullaces and cut part of them.

  2. Place the bullaces and any available imperatrice plums into stone jars.

  3. Boil the jars in pans of water as directed.

Make the jelly

  1. Drain off the juice and strain it through a thick strainer or jelly bag.

  2. Weigh the juice and boil it quickly for 15 to 20 minutes.

  3. Stir in ¾ pound of sugar for every pound of juice until dissolved.

  4. Remove the scum and boil the preserve again for 8 to 12 minutes, or longer if it doesn't set.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the jelly into shallow pans or small molds and let it cool before serving.

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

Plums
Their juice supplies pectin and acid, which help the jelly set and give it flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, once dissolved and boiled, helps it thicken and set firmly.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugared juice until it sets. Sugar and acid must be concentrated by boiling so the pectin can form a gel. Stopping too early leaves a runny jelly, so keep boiling longer if it does not set.

“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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