Name: Pear and Cranberry Jam
Ingredients: 2 parts pears; 1 part cranberries; juice of 1 orange for each quart of fruit; 1 pound sugar for every pound of fruit

Why it works: Pear and orange work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 323 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pear and Cranberry Jam

Ingredients

2 parts pears
1 part cranberries
juice of 1 orange for each quart of fruit
1 pound sugar for every pound of fruit

Directions

Prepare

Chop the pears and cranberries together.
Add the orange juice to the chopped fruit.

Cook the jam

Simmer the mixture uncovered for 30 minutes.
Add sugar, using 1 pound for every pound of fruit.
Boil slowly for 10 minutes, stirring often to prevent burning.

Finish

Pour into jam pots and cover with paraffin.

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.

Pear + orangetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together323 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,079 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Pears: Provide the bulk of the fruit and a mild, sweet body to the jam.
Cranberries: Add tartness and a bright colour that balances the sweetness.
Sugar: Sweetens the jam and helps it thicken and set as it cooks.
Orange juice: Adds acidity and citrus aroma, and helps brighten the fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring during the final boil. Sugar-rich fruit mixtures scorch easily on the bottom of the pan at high heat. Frequent stirring spreads the heat and keeps the jam from burning before it reaches a thick, set consistency.

Swap the orange

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

Vanillafits better
Applefits better
Plumfits better
Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, 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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Pear and Cranberry Jam