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Dessert

Currants for Tarts

A sweet currant preserve made with sugar, brandy paper, and a dry bladder for sealing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Currants for Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Gather currants in good weather and select the best for preserves.

  2. Press juice from the leftover currants and strain it through a fine sieve.

  3. Combine 1 pound of sugar with the currant juice to make a syrup.

  4. Allow the syrup to cool, then add the currants.

Cook and seal

  1. Boil until the mixture is clear.

  2. Transfer to jars or glasses, cover with brandy paper, and seal with clean, dry bladder.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

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

Currants
Provide the fruit body and tart flavor of the filling.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the filling and, once boiled, thickens it into a syrup that sets.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture is clear. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugar and pectin so the filling thickens and sets. Stopping too early leaves it runny and prone to spoiling.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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