Skip to main content
Dessert

Elderberry Jelly

A fruit preserve made from elderberries, apples, and sugar, boiled until it sets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Elderberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Gather wild elderberries while still slightly under ripe.

  2. Boil elderberries in a little water, mashing and stirring occasionally until all berries burst.

  3. Strain the mixture overnight in a jelly bag.

  4. Boil the same amount of apples as elderberries and collect the juice.

  5. Combine equal parts of the elderberry and apple juices.

Make the jelly

  1. Measure 1 pound of sugar for each pint of juice.

  2. Heat the juices to boiling point and stir in the heated sugar.

  3. Boil for 20 to 30 minutes until it jellies.

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. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Wild elderberries
Provide the main flavour and the natural pectin and acid that help the jelly set.
Apples
Add extra pectin, which helps the jelly firm up into a set gel.
Sugar
Sets the gel with pectin and acid and adds sweetness that balances the tartness.

The step that matters

Boil until it jellies. Pectin sets only when enough sugar and acid are concentrated by boiling. Stopping too early leaves a runny jelly, while boiling too long can make it stiff and dull in flavour.

“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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes