Name: Canning, Preserving and Jelly Making
Ingredients: 8 ounces granulated sugar; fruit of choice (e.g., apricots, apples, blackberries, cherries, currants, gooseberries, grapes, huckleberries, peaches, plums, pineapple, pears, quinces, rhubarb, raspberries, strawberries, tomatoes)

Why it works: Apricot and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 342 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Canning, Preserving and Jelly Making

Ingredients

8 ounces granulated sugar
fruit of choice (e.g., apricots, apples, blackberries, cherries, currants, gooseberries, grapes, huckleberries, peaches, plums, pineapple, pears, quinces, rhubarb, raspberries, strawberries, tomatoes)

Directions

Prepare

Prepare the fruit by washing and cutting as necessary.
For each type of fruit, boil in water for the specified time.

Make the syrup

Add 8 ounces of granulated sugar per quart of fruit. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Can and process

Pour the mixture into sterilized jars and seal.
Process jars in a boiling water bath for preservation.

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.

Apricot + peachtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together342 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Apricot + plumtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together284 recipes

Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).
Peach + plumtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together163 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Apple + grapetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,659 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Apple + plumtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together404 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar: Sweetens the fruit and helps the syrup preserve flavor and texture during storage.
Fruit: Provides the main flavor, color and texture of the canned product.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, apricot, apple, grape, peach, plum, pineapple):

Pearfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apricot, apple, grape, peach, plum, pineapple. 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.