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To Dry Currants

Currants are dried by simmering in a sugar syrup and then baking them.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

To Dry Currants

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Layer the currants in a porcelain kettle.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in water.

  3. Let the currants almost boil.

  4. Skim the currants from the syrup.

Dry

  1. Spread the currants on plates to dry in a partly cooled oven.

Make the syrup and dry

  1. Boil the syrup until thickened.

  2. Pour the thickened syrup over the currants.

  3. Dry the currants with the syrup.

Pack and store

  1. Pack the currants in jars.

  2. Cover the jars closely.

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. 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

Currants
The fruit being dried; its water evaporates, leaving it concentrated, chewy and tart-sweet.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved in syrup, helps draw out moisture and preserve it.

The step that matters

Let the currants almost boil. Heating currants to a full boil can split their skins and break them down, so they must be held just short of boiling to keep them whole while they soften and release juice.

“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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