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Salad

Jamaica Plain Cranberry Jewel Salad

A chilled salad of cranberry sauce, orange, and raspberry gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cranberry and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 230 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Jamaica Plain Cranberry Jewel Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine

  1. Dissolve raspberry gelatine in boiling water.

  2. Chill until the mixture begins to thicken.

Add the fruit

  1. If using jellied cranberry sauce, crush it with a fork.

  2. Quarter the orange, remove seeds, and process the rind and pulp in a food chopper.

  3. Fold the cranberry sauce and orange into the raspberry gelatine.

  4. Chill until firm.

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. Cranberry + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together230 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Raspberry + cranberrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together52 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  3. Raspberry + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together521 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Raspberry flavored gelatine
Sets the salad into a firm mold and gives it its raspberry flavor.
Ocean spray cranberry sauce
Adds tart fruit flavor and body to the set gelatine.
Orange
Adds bright citrus flavor and aroma, with rind and pulp contributing bitterness and acidity.

The step that matters

Chill until the mixture begins to thicken. Gelatine sets as it cools. If it is folded with the fruit while still too liquid, the cranberry and orange will sink and settle unevenly instead of staying suspended in the set salad.

Swap the raspberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cranberry, orange):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cranberry, orange. 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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