Why it works: Sugar and mulberry work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Mulberries
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Put mulberries in a preserving pan over the fire.
Extract 1 pint of juice from the mulberries.
Wet the sugar with the strained juice.
Boil the sugar and skim off any foam.
Cook the preserves
Add 2 pounds of ripe mulberries to the syrup and warm through.
Boil gently until half done, then set aside in the syrup until the next day.
Boil gently again until the syrup thickens and can stand in round drops when cold.
Transfer to a pot for storage.
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.
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Sugar + mulberrytop 23% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Mulberries
- Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and pectin-bearing body of the preserve.
- Sugar
- Sweetens and, once boiled to a thick syrup, preserves the fruit by drawing out water.
- Mulberry juice
- Dissolves the sugar into a syrup and carries fruit flavour into the preserve.
The step that matters
Final boil until the syrup sets. Boiling continues until the syrup thickens and drops hold their shape when cold. Too little cooking leaves a runny preserve that may spoil, while overcooking makes it hard and sugary as the sugar concentration rises.
“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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