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Dessert

Red Currants in Bunches

A preserved dish of red currants boiled in a sugar syrup and stored in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and 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 ↓

Red Currants in Bunches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Gather the finest bunches of red currants on a dry, warm day and brush off dust and insects with a feather.

  2. Tie the bunches to six-inch wooden sticks.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pan, combine ½ cup of sugar with enough water to dissolve it and boil for five minutes, skimming well.

  2. Remove the pan from heat and carefully add the currant bunches, allowing them to boil slowly for ten minutes.

  3. Once cooled, remove the bunches and place them in glasses or pots.

  4. Add ½ pint of currant jelly to the syrup, boil until clear, skimming well.

  5. Pour the syrup over the fruit, ensuring it is well covered.

Cover and store

  1. When cold, cover with brandy paper and then paste white paper over the glasses.

  2. Store in a cool, dry room for three months before using.

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. Red currant + curranttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Red currant + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Red currants
Provides the tart fruit that is preserved whole in the syrup.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Currant jelly
Adds pectin and currant flavour so the syrup thickens and sets clear.

The step that matters

Skimming the syrup until clear. Skimming removes foam and impurities that would cloud the syrup and could spoil it. Boiling in the jelly concentrates the sugar and adds pectin, which helps the syrup set around the fruit.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Red currantthe original

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