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
Combine the cherries, sugar, and blanched stones in a pot.
Cook gently until the mixture thickens and comes away from the pan.
Cool and store
Pour the jam into a dish to cool.
Store in boxes with layers of white paper in 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.
The step that matters
Cook gently until the mixture thickens. Cooking too hard can scorch the sugar and fruit on the bottom of the pan and burn the flavor. Gentle heat lets the cherries release pectin and water slowly so the jam sets evenly.
“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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