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Dessert

Mixed Jams

A jam made from a mixture of gooseberries, rhubarb, barberries, apples, damson plums, cherries, currants, mulberries, lemons, grapes, and orange with white sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Mixed Jams

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the mixed fruits in a pot.

  2. Add the sugar and boil until the jam reaches the desired consistency.

  3. Pour the jam into tumblers and cover tightly for future use.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Apple + grapetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Apple + plumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Rhubarb + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Plum + grapetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Mixed fruits
Provide the fruit base, pectin, and tartness that give the jam its body and flavor.
White sugar
Sweetens the jam and, when boiled, thickens it and helps it set as it cools.

The step that matters

Boiling to the desired consistency. Sugar and fruit pectin set into a gel only at a sufficiently high concentration, so boiling too briefly leaves the jam runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull in flavor.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rhubarb, apple, plum, lemon, grape, orange, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rhubarb, apple, plum, lemon, grape, orange, sugar. 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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