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Currant Jelly, No. 2

A jelly made from currants and sugar, boiled and set in glasses.

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 Jelly, No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pick the currants free from stems and leaves.

  2. Crush the currants in a large dish using a vegetable masher.

  3. Place the crushed fruit in cheese-cloth and press out the juice.

  4. Measure the strained juice and pour it into a clean preserving kettle.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the juice for five minutes, then add sugar.

  2. Stir until it begins to boil, then boil for one minute.

  3. Fill warm, dry glasses with the jelly.

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 pectin and acid that let the juice set into a firm jelly.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set by binding water and firming the gel.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice with sugar for one minute. Sugar and pectin need a rolling boil to reach the concentration needed for a set. Boiling too briefly can leave the jelly runny, while overboiling can make it stiff and dull in flavour.

“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.

More currant jelly recipes

Red 93Black 55Sauce 50White 38French 11Tartlets 7 See all 365 →

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