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 III
Ingredients
Directions
Squeeze juice from currants without cooking.
Boil the juice for 20 minutes.
Add 1 pound of hot sugar for each pint of juice.
Stir well and boil for an additional 5 minutes.
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.
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Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 juice with natural pectin and acid, which help the jelly set and give it a tart flavor.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the jelly and, with pectin and acid, helps it gel into a firm set.
The step that matters
Boiling after adding the sugar. The final boil with sugar is when the jelly sets. Pectin, acid and sugar must reach the right balance to gel. Too little boiling leaves it runny, and too much can make it stiff or dull in flavor.
“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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