Name: Canned Preserved Fruits
Ingredients: 4 pounds of fruit (cherries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, quinces, pears, grapes, peaches, pineapples, crab-apples, plums, rhubarb, sour apples, currants, cranberries); 1 to 1½ pounds of sugar per pound of fruit; ½ cup of water per pound of sugar

Why it works: Pear and plum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Canned Preserved Fruits

Ingredients

4 pounds of fruit (cherries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, quinces, pears, grapes, peaches, pineapples, crab-apples, plums, rhubarb, sour apples, currants, cranberries)
1 to 1½ pounds of sugar per pound of fruit
½ cup of water per pound of sugar

Directions

Prepare

Prepare the fruit by washing and cutting as necessary.

Cook and can

Simmer the fruit in a syrup made from sugar and water until tender.
Skim the fruit out into jars.
Bring the remaining syrup to a boil.
Fill the jars with syrup until overflowing, cover, and seal immediately.

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.

Pear + plumtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pear + appletop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together649 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Peach + plumtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together163 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Quince + peartop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together133 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Pear + peachtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together114 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fruit: Forms the body of the preserve and carries its flavour once cooked tender in syrup.
Sugar: Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved in water, forms the syrup that preserves it.
Water: Dissolves the sugar into a syrup that the fruit simmers in.

The step that matters

Filling the jars with syrup until overflowing. Leaving the jars full to the brim drives out air, so that as the contents cool a proper vacuum forms and the seal holds. Sealing immediately, while the syrup is hot, helps keep the jars airtight.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quince, pear, peach, pineapple, crab, apple, plum):

Apricotfits better
Figfits about as well
Vanillafits about as well
Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quince, pear, peach, pineapple, crab, apple, plum. 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.

Mixed Fruit Sherbet6 recipes

Apple Pudding256 recipes

Rhubarb Pie152 recipes

Quince Jelly131 recipes

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Canned Preserved Fruits