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Dessert

Strawberry Jam

A jam made from ripe strawberries, red currant juice, and sugar, cooked until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberry Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Bruise the strawberries very finely.

  2. Add a little juice of red currants to the strawberries.

  3. Measure the weight of the strawberries and add the same weight in sugar, sprinkling it over the fruit.

Cook the jam

  1. Place the mixture in a preserving pan over a clear, slow fire.

  2. Skim off any foam.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes.

Pot and cool

  1. Pour the jam into glasses.

  2. Let it cool.

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. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and body of the jam.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it set and keep by drawing out moisture.
Red currant juice
Adds acidity and natural pectin to help the jam set and brighten its flavour.

The step that matters

Boil for 20 minutes after skimming. Boiling concentrates the fruit and sugar until the pectin and acid can gel on cooling. Under-boiling leaves a runny jam, while over-boiling can darken and dull the fresh fruit 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.

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