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Dessert

Oriental Jam

A jam made with currant juice, raisins, mashed currants, brown sugar, oranges, and lemons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Oriental Jam

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook currant juice in a pot over medium heat for about 10 minutes.

  2. Add raisins and heat while mashing currants and mixing in brown sugar.

  3. Cook the mixture for 20 minutes.

  4. Cut oranges and lemons into small pieces and stir into the mixture.

  5. Cook all ingredients together until well combined.

  6. Pour into jelly glasses and seal like jelly.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Currants
Provide the main fruit body and tart flavour of the jam.
Seeded raisins
Add body and natural sweetness to the jam.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it thicken as it cooks.
Oranges
Add citrus aroma and acidity that brightens the flavour.
Lemons
Add acidity that balances sweetness and supports setting.

The step that matters

Cook all ingredients together until well combined. Sugar and fruit pectin must be heated long enough to dissolve and concentrate, or the jam may stay runny. Stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the pot, which would add a burnt taste.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, orange, lemon. 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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