Name: Strawberry Acid for Jelly
Ingredients: 12 pounds ripe strawberries; 3 quarts spring water; 5 ounces tartaric acid; 1½ pounds powdered loaf sugar per pint of strawberry juice

Strawberry Acid for Jelly

A strawberry jelly made by steeping strawberries in water with tartaric acid, then straining and sweetening with powdered loaf sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription

From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients

Why it works: Sugar and strawberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,060 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberry Acid for Jelly

Ingredients

12 pounds ripe strawberries
3 quarts spring water
5 ounces tartaric acid
1½ pounds powdered loaf sugar per pint of strawberry juice

Directions

Prepare the juice

Place 12 pounds of ripe strawberries in a pan.
Pour 3 quarts of spring water over the strawberries.
Add 5 ounces of tartaric acid.
Let the mixture sit for 24 hours.
Strain the mixture without bruising the fruit.

Make the jelly

For each pint of strained juice, add 1½ pounds of powdered loaf sugar.
Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

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.

Sugar + strawberrytop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,060 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe strawberries: Provide the fruit juice that forms the base and flavour of the jelly.
Tartaric acid: Adds acidity, brightening the flavour and helping the juice set into jelly.
Powdered loaf sugar: Sweetens the jelly and helps it set firm and hold its shape.

“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.