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Cherries Preserved with Currant Juice

A preserved fruit made by boiling cherries with currant juice and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cherries Preserved with Currant Juice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the currant juice

  1. Place the currants in a large pot over medium heat.

  2. Once boiling, crush the currants and strain through cheesecloth, pressing out all the juice.

Cook the cherries

  1. Stem and pit the cherries, saving all the juice.

  2. Combine the cherries, currant juice, and sugar in the pot.

  3. Heat the mixture to a boil and skim off any foam.

  4. Boil for 20 minutes.

  5. Transfer to sterilized jars or tumblers.

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 + 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

Cherries
Provide the main fruit body and flavor of the preserve.
Currants
Their juice adds tartness and extra natural pectin to help the preserve set.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps it thicken and keep well.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam after the mixture boils. Foam is made of air, fruit proteins and impurities that can cloud the preserve and spoil its texture if left in. Removing it before the long boil keeps the result clear and clean-tasting.

“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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