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Cranberry Jelly Spiced

A sweet and spiced cranberry jelly made with cranberries, sugar, water, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Cranberry Jelly Spiced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over and wash the cranberries.

Make the jelly

  1. Add boiling water and boil until the cranberries are soft.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Add sugar, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and cold water; bring to a boil.

  4. Simmer for 15 minutes.

  5. Add salt and pour into glasses.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + allspicetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,938 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Cranberries
Provide the tart fruit base and pectin that help the mixture set into a jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with the fruit's pectin, helps the mixture thicken and set.

The step that matters

Simmer for 15 minutes. Simmering concentrates the strained juice and dissolves the sugar, so the pectin can set properly as it cools. Too short a simmer can leave the jelly runny.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Allspicethe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, cinnamon. 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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