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Dessert

Jams of All Berry Fruits

A jam made from mashed berry fruit, sugar, and water, boiled until thick and smooth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Jams of All Berry Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Scald and mash the fruit as for jelly.

  2. Weigh the prepared fruit and add an equal weight of sugar.

Cook the jam

  1. Boil the fruit in its own juice for 30 minutes before adding sugar.

  2. After adding sugar, boil for another 30 minutes until thick and smooth.

  3. Skim the scum from the surface while boiling for a clear syrup.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Berry + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Berry + syruptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Berry fruit
Provides the main flavour and the natural pectin that helps the jam thicken.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam, preserves it, and helps it set as the mixture thickens.

The step that matters

Boiling after the sugar goes in. Sugar must dissolve fully and the mixture must boil long enough to reach a thick, set consistency. Too short a boil leaves the jam runny, while too long a boil can darken and scorch it.

Swap the berry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Berrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup. 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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