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Dessert

Cranberry Conserve

A sweet preserve made from cranberries, raisins, nuts, sugar, orange zest, and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nuts and raisin work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 490 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cranberry Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook cranberries, raisins, and water until cranberries break slightly.

  2. Add sugar and orange rind; cook until thick enough to stand when cool.

  3. Stir in nuts and orange juice.

  4. Pour into molds to cool.

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. Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

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

  4. Nuts + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cranberries
Provide the tart fruit base that breaks down into the preserve's body.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps it thicken as the mixture cooks down.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture while softening into the fruit mixture.
Nuts
Add crunch and contrast to the soft, jelly-like preserve.

The step that matters

Cook until thick enough to stand when cool. Cranberries are high in pectin and set as they cool, so stopping the cooking too early leaves a runny preserve. Cooking too long can make it stiff, so check the spoon test as it cools.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nuts, raisin, 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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