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Currant Jelly, Red and White

A jelly made from currants and sugar, boiled to a caramel-like consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Currant Jelly, Red and White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Mash the currants in a preserving pan.

  2. Heat over medium heat until boiling.

  3. Strain the mixture through a flannel bag to extract the juice.

  4. Measure the juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Add an equal amount of sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reaches a caramel-like consistency.

  3. Add the jelly.

  4. Boil for 10 minutes, skimming off any foam.

Finish

  1. Remove from heat.

  2. Pour into jars.

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

Currants
Provide natural pectin and acid, which let the juice gel and give a tart flavor.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and, at high concentration, helps the juice set and keeps the jelly preserved.

The step that matters

Boil the juice and sugar until it sets. Sugar, pectin and acid form a gel only at a high enough concentration. Stopping too early leaves the jelly runny, while boiling too long makes it stiff, dull and prone to scorching.

“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.

More currant jelly recipes

Red 93Black 55Sauce 50White 38French 11Tartlets 7 See all 365 →

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