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Dessert

English Guava

A jelly made from guava and plum juice with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,313 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

English Guava

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Strip the stalks from the bullaces.

  2. Cut part of them.

  3. Place the bullaces and plums into stone jars.

  4. Boil the jars in a water bath for 15-20 minutes.

Extract the juice

  1. Drain the juice.

  2. Strain it through a jelly bag.

  3. Weigh the juice.

  4. Boil it quickly for 15-20 minutes.

Make and set the jelly

  1. Stir in 3 lbs of sugar until dissolved.

  2. Remove the scum.

  3. Boil again for 8-12 minutes until it jellies.

  4. Pour the jelly into shallow pans or small molds.

  5. Let it set.

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 + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Red plums
Provide the fruit flavour, acidity and natural pectin that help the jelly set.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and binds water so the pectin network can form a firm gel.

The step that matters

Boil again until it jellies. Boiling concentrates the juice and sugar so the pectin can form a gel. Stopping too early leaves a runny jelly, while boiling too long can make it stiff and sticky.

“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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