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Dessert

Jim Jam

A jam made from currants, raspberry juice, raisins, and diced oranges, boiled for 1½ hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Jim Jam

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine sugar, currant juice, raspberry juice, raisins, and diced oranges in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 1½ hours.

  3. Serve the jam with meats.

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 + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Red raspberry + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Red raspberry + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, with heat and acid, helps it thicken and set.
Currant juice
Adds tartness and natural pectin that helps the jam gel.
Raspberry juice
Provides the main raspberry flavour and deep red colour.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness as they soften in the cooking.
Oranges
Add bright, slightly bitter aroma and acidity, with peel adding pectin.

The step that matters

Boil for the full 1½ hours. Sugar and fruit acids need sustained heat to concentrate the liquid and activate the pectin, so the jam thickens and sets. Stopping early can leave it runny.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, red raspberry, raisin, orange):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, red raspberry, raisin, orange. 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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