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
Weigh 12 pounds of ripe cherries and 1 pound of sugar.
Break the stones of some cherries and blanch them.
Cook and store
Combine cherries, sugar, and blanched stones in a pot.
Boil gently until the jam clears from the pan.
Pour into China plates to cool.
Store in boxes with white paper between.
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, flavor, and bulk that the jam is built from.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the jam and helps it thicken and keep as it cooks down.
- Cherry stones
- Blanched stones add a subtle almond-like aroma to the cooking fruit.
The step that matters
Boil gently until the jam clears from the pan. Boiling too hard can scorch the sugar and fruit on the bottom of the pot, while boiling too briefly leaves the jam too loose to set. Gentle heat with steady stirring gives even cooking and proper thickening.
“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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