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Dessert

Mixed Jam

A jam made from apples, plums, pears, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mixed Jam

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the apples and pears together until soft.

  2. Add the plums and sugar to the fruit.

  3. Boil the mixture until it sets.

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. Plum + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Apple + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Apple + plumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

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

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

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

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
Adds sweetness and helps the jam set by binding with fruit pectin.
Apples
Provide natural pectin and body that helps the jam thicken.
Pears
Add soft fruit bulk and mild sweetness to the jam base.
Plums
Contribute fruit pulp, flavour and acidity to the jam.

The step that matters

Boiling until it sets. Boiling must reach the point where sugar, acid and pectin form a gel. Stopping too early leaves runny jam, while boiling too long can make it stiff and dull in flavour.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Plumthe original
  2. Apricotfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Quincefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, pear, 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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