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Currant Jelly I

A sweet jelly made from cherry and red currants boiled with water and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and red currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 57 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Currant Jelly I

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over the currants and wash them. Do not remove the stems.

  2. Place the currants in a kettle with a little water.

Cook and strain

  1. Cook slowly until the currants look white.

  2. Put the cooked currants in a bag and drain the juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Measure the juice and bring it to a boiling point.

  2. Boil the juice for 8 minutes.

  3. Add hot sugar (1 cup of sugar for every cup of juice) and boil for 3 more minutes.

  4. Pour the jelly into glasses.

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 + red curranttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Cherry + red curranttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  3. Cherry + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cherry + curranttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cherry currants
Supply the juice, whose natural pectin and acidity let the jelly set.
Red currants
Add more juice and the pectin and acidity needed for the jelly to set.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the tart juice and helps it set into a firm, clear gel.

The step that matters

Adding the hot sugar and boiling. The sugar must be added hot and boiled for the full time so it dissolves fully and the juice reaches the concentration needed to set. Too little boiling leaves the jelly runny, while overcooking can make it stiff or cloudy.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, red currant, sugar. 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.

More currant jelly recipes

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

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