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Dessert

Currant Jelly

Currant jelly is a sweet preserve made by boiling currants and sugar until thickened.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Crush the currants with a wooden potato masher.

  2. Put 1 cup of crushed fruit at a time through cheesecloth to extract the juice.

  3. Measure the juice and place it in a porcelain kettle.

Cook the jelly

  1. Bring the juice to a slow boil, then boil for 20 minutes, removing any scum that forms.

  2. Add an equal amount of sugar and boil for an additional 5 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and pour it into tumblers.

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 juice and natural pectin that help the jelly set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with the boil, helps the juice thicken and set into jelly.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice with sugar. Currant juice must reach a full boil long enough to concentrate and set. Boiling too briefly leaves the jelly runny, while overcooking can make it stiff or dull in flavor. Skimming scum keeps the jelly clear.

“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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