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Blackberry Jelly

A sweet blackberry jelly made by boiling juice with sugar and covering with brandy-dipped paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Blackberry Jelly

Why it works: Blackberry and brandy work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 146 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Blackberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Squeeze the juice from the blackberries and strain it.

  2. Add an equal quantity of sugar to the juice.

Cook and cover

  1. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

  2. Pour the jelly into glasses.

  3. Cover with paper dipped in brandy and tie tightly.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Blackberry + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Blackberry + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Blackberry juice
Provides the main flavour and colour, and its natural fruit pectin and acid help the jelly set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when boiled with the juice, helps it thicken into a gel.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 30 minutes. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sugar and fruit pectin. The jelly sets only when these reach the right balance, so boiling too briefly leaves it runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff.

Swap the blackberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Blackberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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