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Dessert

Guava Jelly

A sweet preserve made from guava, lime juice, and sugar-candy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Guava and lime share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Guava Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Peel and quarter the guavas.

  2. Boil them in a small amount of water.

  3. Strain the juice through a cloth or bag.

Make the jelly

  1. Add the lime juice and sugar-candy to the guava juice.

  2. Boil and skim carefully until it reaches a deep reddish-brown color and proper consistency.

  3. Pour into a jar immediately or allow to cool slightly before bottling.

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. Guava + limetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Guava + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together115 recipes

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

  3. Lime + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,332 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

Guavas
Their pectin and natural acid help the juice set into a jelly.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and supports gelling.
Sugar-candy
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set as it thickens while boiling.

The step that matters

Boil and skim carefully. Boiling concentrates the juice and sugar until it reaches the gelling point; under-boiling leaves it runny, while over-boiling darkens and toughens the set. Skimming removes foam so the jelly stays clear.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Pineapplefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against guava, 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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