Why it works: Sugar and cherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,598 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Cherry Jam
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Break the stones of part of the cherries and blanch them.
Cook the jam
Combine the cherries, sugar, and broken stones in a pot.
Boil gently until the jam becomes clear and thickens.
Cool and store
Pour the jam into china plates to cool.
Store in boxes with white paper between layers.
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.
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Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,598 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cherries
- Provide the fruit, pectin-bearing flesh, and flavour that form the body of the jam.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the jam and helps it set and keep by drawing water away from the fruit.
- Cherry stones
- Release natural pectin and a subtle almond-like aroma during gentle boiling.
The step that matters
Boiling gently until clear and thickened. Boiling too hard can scorch the sugar and break down fruit pectin unevenly, while too little heat leaves the jam runny. Gentle, steady heat lets the sugar concentrate and the jam set evenly and clear.
“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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