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Dessert

Spiced Currants

A jam made by boiling currants with spices and sugar, finished with vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Currants

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the currants with the spices tied in a small bag and the sugar until it thickens to a jam.

  2. When nearly done, add the vinegar.

  3. Put it in tumblers like currant jelly or in glass jars.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Currants
Supply the fruit body and natural pectin that help the jam thicken and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, with the fruit's pectin, helps it thicken into a spreadable set.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavor and supports setting.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aromatic spice flavor.

The step that matters

Boil until it thickens to a jam. Sugar and fruit pectin only gel after enough cooking to concentrate the mixture. Stopping too early leaves a runny jam that will not set, while the vinegar is added near the end so its acidity stays bright.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, clove, allspice, mace, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, clove, allspice, mace, vinegar, 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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