Skip to main content
Drink

Red Currant Ketchup

A sweet and tangy sauce made from red currants, vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Red Currant Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the currants

  1. Put the currants in a preserving kettle and boil until soft.

  2. Push the currants through a fine sieve to remove seeds and skins.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, red pepper, cloves, allspice, and salt to the strained currants.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes or until desired thickness is reached.

  3. Seal in jars while boiling hot.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Currants
Provide the fruit base, with pectin and acidity that help the ketchup thicken as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it dissolves and concentrates, helps the ketchup thicken and preserve.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.

The step that matters

Boil until thick, then seal while hot. Currants thicken mainly by pectin and sugar concentrating as water evaporates. Stopping too early leaves the ketchup runny, and sealing it while boiling hot helps drive air out of the jars so it keeps better.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesBlack Currant CordialBlack Currant Cordial11 recipesCinnamon TinctureCinnamon Tincture10 recipes