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Dessert

Mixed Jam for Children

A jam made from gooseberries, currants, cherries, raspberries, and apples, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and black currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 72 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Mixed Jam for Children

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Stew the cherries, then pare, core, and cut up the apples.

  2. Weigh the fruit after it has been picked and stoned.

Make the jam

  1. Add ½ lb of sugar for each pound of fruit.

  2. Let the mixture boil for one hour, allowing the cherries and apples to boil for half an hour before adding the other fruits.

  3. Pour the jam into jars and let it cool.

Seal the jars

  1. Place a round of thin writing paper, dipped in brandy, on top of each jar so it touches the jam.

  2. Cut thin paper rounds to overlap the jars, brush both sides with egg white, and tie them on while moist.

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. Red currant + black curranttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Black currant + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Red currant + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  5. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps the jam thicken and keep as it cooks.
Apples
Their natural pectin helps the jam set.
Cherries
Add body and flavour, and are cooked first so they soften before the other fruits go in.
Black currants
Contribute tartness and deep flavour to the jam.

The step that matters

Adding the other fruits at the right time. Cherries and apples need a head start in the boil because they are firmer and take longer to soften. Adding the softer fruits too early can overcook them into mush while the firmer ones are still underdone.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red currant, black currant, 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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