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Drink

Jim-jam

A sweet fruit drink made with currant juice, raspberry juice, raisins, oranges, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Raspberry and orange work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 521 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Jim-jam

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the rind of the oranges into small strips and use the whole orange.

  2. Stone and halve the raisins.

  3. Combine all ingredients in a pot and cook for 45 minutes.

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. Raspberry + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together521 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Currant + raspberrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together366 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Currant juice
Adds tart flavour and liquid to the jam.
Raspberry juice
Adds fruity flavour, colour and liquid to the jam.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a chewy texture as they soften during cooking.
Oranges
Their rind adds a bright, slightly bitter aroma and sharp citrus flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture thicken as the liquid reduces during cooking.

The step that matters

Combine all ingredients in a pot and cook for 45 minutes. The jam thickens as water evaporates and the sugar concentrates. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while cooking too long can make it stiff and overly dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raspberry, raisin, 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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