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Jams, Jellies, Preserved Fruits, and Fruit Disiies

A method for making fruit preserves by simmering fruit with sugar, water, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and brandy work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 513 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Jams, Jellies, Preserved Fruits, and Fruit Disiies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Prepare the syrup by dipping sugar lumps in water and placing them in a preserving pan.

  2. Heat the moistened sugar slowly until it boils, then simmer until beads form on the surface.

Cook and soak the fruit

  1. Add the fruit to the syrup and let it soften without cracking.

  2. Cool the fruit for a few hours, then drain it.

  3. Boil the syrup again and pour it over the cooled fruit along with the brandy.

Store

  1. Store the mixture in glass jars and seal securely.

  2. Let the jars sit for a short time before opening.

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. Apricot + brandytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Fruit
Provides the bulk of the preserve and its flavor, and softens in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, once boiled, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the finished preserve.

The step that matters

Simmering the syrup until beads form. Heating the sugar syrup to the bead stage concentrates the sugar, which helps the fruit hold its shape and keeps the preserve stable. Undercooked syrup can leave the fruit watery, while overcooking can make the syrup too thick.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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