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Dessert

Cranberry, Grape, and Currant Jelly

A fruit jelly made from cranberries, grapes, and currants sweetened with sugar and thickened with beaten egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Grape and currant work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 346 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Cranberry, Grape, and Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wash and drain the fruit until nearly dry.

  2. Place the fruit in an earthen jar and set the jar in a kettle of boiling water, ensuring no water enters the jar.

  3. When the fruit breaks, pour it into a flannel bag to drain without squeezing.

Make the jelly

  1. Add 1 ½ pounds of sugar and ½ beaten egg white to each pint of juice.

  2. Boil the syrup gently, skimming off any scum that rises.

  3. After 15-20 minutes, test a teaspoonful in cold water to check if it has jellied.

  4. For best results, set the jelly in the sun for a few days.

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. Grape + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together346 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Grape + sugartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,490 recipes

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

  4. Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Cranberries
Provide the tart flavor and natural pectin that help the jelly set.
Grapes
Add sweetness and juice that give the jelly its body and flavor.
Currants
Contribute acidity and natural pectin, helping the jelly firm up.
White sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, boiled with the juice, helps it reach a set.
Egg white
Binds to impurities so they rise as scum, which can be skimmed off for a clearer jelly.

The step that matters

Draining without squeezing. Squeezing the flannel bag pushes cloudy solids through into the juice, making the jelly cloudy. Letting it drip slowly keeps the finished jelly clear.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, sugar, egg. 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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