Dan Souza

With its incredibly rich, nuanced, bittersweet flavor, from-scratch butterscotch pudding is worlds away from the dull, sweet kind you get from an instant mix. But making butterscotch pudding can be temperamental: A custard is combined with homemade caramel, and the usual approach of boiling it from start to finish is tricky in a blink-and-you've-burned-it way. Our method is forgiving: Boil the caramel to jump-start it, then reduce the heat and gently simmer it until it reaches the right temperature. Most recipes have you temper the yolks and cornstarch, add everything to the dairy in the pot, and stir away. We swapped this fussy method in favor of pouring the boiling caramel directly over the thickening agents. When taking the temperature of the caramel in step 1, tilt the saucepan and move the thermometer back and forth to equalize hot and cool spots.

Refrigerator jams generally make a small batch, which means you don’t need to invest in bushels of fruit and there’s no need for canning equipment to sterilize the jars for long-term storage; you can keep the one or two jars of jam the recipe makes in the fridge and finish them off in a few weeks. We use a small amount of fruit so that it will cook down quickly to the proper consistency, and the less you cook fruit, the more of its fresh taste is preserved. A shorter cooking time also preserves more of the naturally occurring pectin in the fruit, which is necessary for proper gelling. In addition to the fruit’s pectin, we tinkered with the amounts of lemon juice and sugar to be sure that the jam would set properly, since acidity and sugar help pectin form a strong gel without the need for adding commercial pectin.

America's Test Kitchen's Dan Souza breaks down the science behind bubbles and carbonation, as well the best glassware for serving champagne and sparkling wine.