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Dessert

Currant and Raisin Jam

A jam made from currants, raisins, sugar, orange, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Currant and Raisin Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the raisins in half and remove their seeds.

  2. Cook the raisins in 1 pint of water for 1 hour.

  3. Pick over the currants.

  4. Place the currants in a preserving kettle.

  5. Add the juice of the orange.

  6. Remove the seeds from the orange.

  7. Chop the pulp and peel finely.

  8. Mix the pulp and peel with the sugar.

  9. Add the sugar mixture.

Cook and jar

  1. Cook for 15 minutes after boiling.

  2. Cook for another 15 minutes.

  3. Pour into jelly glasses.

  4. Cover once cool.

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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Orange + curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 main fruit body and tartness that give the jam its structure once cooked down.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it set by binding water and thickening the cooked fruit.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and body, softened by cooking in water first.
Orange
Adds acidity and aroma from its juice, pulp and peel.

The step that matters

Cook for 15 minutes after boiling. Sugar and fruit pectin set into a gel only at the right concentration. Too short a cook leaves the jam runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, orange. 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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