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Currants and Gooseberries Canned in Pint Jars

A preserved fruit mixture of currants and gooseberries canned in pint jars with sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and currant 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 ↓

Currants and Gooseberries Canned in Pint Jars

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and pack

  1. Wash the currants and gooseberries carefully.

  2. Pack the fruit closely in sterilized pint jars.

Add syrup and process

  1. Cover the fruit with boiling syrup made from 1 cup sugar and 2 cups water, leaving a quarter inch from the top.

  2. Half seal the jars and sterilize them for 16 minutes.

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. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant 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
Supply the main fruit flavour and tartness, and hold their shape in the jar.
Gooseberries
Add tart fruit flavour and texture that balances the sweet syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps the fruit keep its colour and texture.

The step that matters

Leaving a quarter inch of headspace. The space at the top lets the contents expand during heating without spilling or pushing out syrup. As the jar cools, the contents contract and help create a firm seal, so the headspace needs to be measured correctly.

“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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