Why it works: Medlar and sugar work together. They rank in the top 35% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Guava Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the fruit
Stew ripe guavas in a covered pot with enough water until thoroughly cooked, about several hours.
Pour the mixture into a jelly bag and let the juice run through without pressing.
Make the jelly
Weigh the juice and boil it with an equal weight of cane loaf sugar until clear, stirring and skimming as needed.
Once cooled, pour the jelly into glass jars.
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.
-
Medlar + sugartop 35% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4 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
- Ripe medlars
- Provide the pectin and acid that let the juice set into a jelly.
- Cane loaf sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the juice thicken and set when boiled.
The step that matters
Let the juice drip without pressing. Pressing the jelly bag pushes fine pulp and solids through with the juice, which makes the finished jelly cloudy instead of clear.
“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.
You might also like
White Cake431 recipes
Pound Cake373 recipes
Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes
Spice Cake344 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.