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Dessert

Cherry Marmalade

A preserve made from cherries, currant juice, and sugar boiled to jelly consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

Cherry Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Stone the cherries and thoroughly pulp them through a coarse sieve.

  2. For every 3 pounds of pulp, add ½ pint of currant juice.

  3. Add ¾ pound of sugar for each pound of fruit and mix well.

Cook and store

  1. Boil the mixture until it reaches a jelly consistency.

  2. Pour into cans or glasses for storage.

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 + 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

Cherries
Provide the main fruit pulp, flavour and body for the marmalade.
Currant juice
Adds extra natural pectin and tartness to help the mixture set.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, once boiled, helps the mixture thicken to a jelly-like set.

The step that matters

Boiling to a jelly consistency. Boiling must go long enough for the sugar and pectin to concentrate and set, but not so long that the sugar caramelises or the flavour turns dull. Checking for a jelly-like set on a cold plate helps prevent under- or over-cooking.

“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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