Name: Dried Currants
Ingredients: ripe currants; sugar

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 ↓

Dried Currants

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

ripe currants
sugar

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Remove currants from the stems and discard any that are unclean.
Spread the currants on plates and sprinkle generously with sugar.

Dry

Dry the currants in the sun or in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).
Cover with mosquito nets to keep flies away.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

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

Ripe currants: The fruit being dried, concentrating its flavor as its water evaporates.
Sugar: Sweetens the currants and draws out some moisture from their surface.

“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.