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Dessert

Cheery Jam

A jam made from cherries, sugar, and red currant juice, flavored with crushed cherry stones.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,598 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cheery Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Weigh the cherries before stoning.

  2. Prepare half the weight of sugar.

  3. Stone the cherries.

Make the jam

  1. Boil the cherries in a preserving pan until most of the juice is evaporated.

  2. Add the crushed sugar.

  3. Add the red currant juice.

  4. Boil the mixture until it jellies, stirring frequently, for about 20 minutes to 1 hour.

  5. Skim the jam well.

  6. Add the cracked cherry stones for flavor.

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. Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Currant + cherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Cherries
Provide the fruit, flavor and body that the jam is built around.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps it set as it boils.
Red-currant juice
Adds extra acidity and natural pectin to help the jam jell.

The step that matters

Boil until it jellies. Boiling must go on until the mixture reaches the setting point, since the sugar and pectin only gel at a high enough concentration. Stirring often prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cherry. 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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