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Dessert

Guava Jelly

A fruit jelly made from apples and guavas, sweetened with sugar and flavored with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and guava share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Guava Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the apples and guavas into small pieces without peeling them.

  2. Cover the fruit with water.

  3. Boil the mixture for about 1.5 hours.

  4. Place the mixture in a flannel bag.

  5. Let it drip until all the juice is extracted.

Make the jelly

  1. The next day, measure the juice.

  2. For every pint of juice, add ¾ pint of sugar.

  3. Boil the mixture for about 30 minutes or until it jellies.

Pot and seal

  1. Pour the jelly into glasses.

  2. Place a piece of writing paper dipped in brandy on top of each glass.

  3. Seal.

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 + guavatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Guava + brandytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

Apples
Provide pectin and body that help the juice set into a jelly.
Guavas
Add aroma and flavour to the juice.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set when boiled with the juice.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice with sugar until it jellies. Jelly sets when enough sugar and pectin are concentrated by boiling. Too short a boil leaves it runny, while over-boiling can make it stiff or cause sugar to crystallise.

Swap the guava

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

  1. Apricotfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Guavathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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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