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Dessert

Currant Sweetmeats

Currant Sweetmeats are currants stewed with sugar until the sugar dissolves, then canned.

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 ↓

Currant Sweetmeats

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Carefully stem and weigh the currants.

  2. In a kettle, combine the currants and sugar, cover, and heat slowly for 20-30 minutes.

  3. Shake the kettle occasionally to mix the sugar with the fruit without boiling.

  4. Once the sugar is dissolved, pour the mixture into cans and secure the covers immediately.

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
Provide the fruit base and tart flavor that the sugar sweetens.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved into its juices, helps set the thick texture.

The step that matters

Heating without boiling. Heating slowly and shaking gently dissolves the sugar before the fruit boils. Boiling can scorch the sugar and break down the fresh fruit flavor and texture.

“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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