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Dessert

Spiced Currants

A sweet preserve of currants cooked with sugar and spices to a jelly consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Currants

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the currants

  1. Boil the currants and sugar in a pot for 20 minutes.

  2. Skim out the currants and set them aside.

Make the jelly

  1. Add an additional ½ pound of sugar and the spices to the remaining juice.

  2. Boil the juice until it reaches a jelly consistency.

  3. Pour the jelly over the reserved currants.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Currant + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 body, tartness, and the juice that becomes the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps the juice set into jelly.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavor.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma.

The step that matters

Boil the juice until it reaches a jelly consistency. Sugar and the fruit's pectin and acid set only once enough water has evaporated, so stopping early leaves a runny syrup, while boiling too long can make it stiff or scorch.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, clove, cinnamon, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, cinnamon, pepper. 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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