Name: Jam
Ingredients: 1 pound of sugar; 1 pound of fruit (strawberry, blackberry, or raspberry)

Why it works: Sugar and strawberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,060 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Jam

Ingredients

1 pound of sugar
1 pound of fruit (strawberry, blackberry, or raspberry)

Directions

Mash the fruit well.
Combine the mashed fruit with the sugar in a pot.
Boil the mixture for half an hour.
Seal the jam in jars.

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.

Sugar + strawberrytop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,060 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar: Sweetens the jam and, as it boils, helps it thicken and keeps it preserved.
Fruit: Provides the main flavour, colour and body of the jam once mashed and cooked down.

“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.