Alliums

About 500 species in the genus Allium (lily family), native to northern temperate regions, with ~20 important food species and a 3,000+ year culinary history. The allium family is the aromatic backbone of most savory cooking worldwide, defined by sulfur chemistry that makes them pungent raw and sweet when cooked. All alliums store energy as fructose chains (not starch), which is why long slow cooking breaks them down to produce marked sweetness.

Traditional jam-making is thermal violence — boil hard, drive off water, hope something recognizable survives. At 85°C with precision control, jam tastes like the fresh fruit you started with while remaining fully safe and properly set. The key: pectin only needs 83°C to gel, so everything above that is destroying flavor you could have kept.

The Aroma Problem

If you can smell jam from the other side of the house, that’s flavor vapor — volatile aroma compounds hitching a ride on escaping steam. At 100°C with vigorous boiling, steam acts as a cargo ship for aroma molecules. You get a wonderful kitchen smell and jam that tastes like sugar with a memory of fruit.