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Dessert

Spiced Currants

A preserved fruit dish made by boiling currants with spices, sugar, salt, and vinegar.

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

Prepare

  1. Remove stems and wash the currants.

Cook

  1. Add the remaining ingredients and boil for 20 minutes.

Store

  1. Store in a stone jar or glass containers.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Currant + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Currant + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,038 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 base, bulk, and tart flavor of the spiced preserve.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit by binding water.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps preserve the mixture.
Cloves
Add a warm, pungent aroma to the preserve.
Cinnamon
Adds a sweet, warm aroma that rounds out the spicing.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture. As water evaporates during boiling, the sugar and vinegar concentrate and the sugars can scorch on the bottom of the pan if heat is too high. Stirring and keeping the boil controlled prevents burning.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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