Why it works: Sugar and pine work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Strawberry Jam
Ingredients
Directions
Mash the strawberries in a preserving pan.
Mix the sugar well with the mashed strawberries.
Stir, skim off any foam, and boil for 20 minutes.
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 + pinetop 30% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together309 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Strawberries
- Provide the fruit body, flavour and natural pectin that set the jam when cooked.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the jam, helps it set, and preserves it by binding water.
The step that matters
Skimming off the foam while boiling. Foam forms as impurities and air rise to the surface during boiling. Skimming it keeps the jam clear and clean-tasting. Stirring keeps the sugar dissolved so it does not scorch on the base of the pan.
“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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