Why it works: Black currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Black Currant Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Make the juice
Place black currants in a saucepan over medium heat and mash them.
Allow the currants to boil briefly, then remove from heat and drain through a fine sieve.
Boil the strained juice for 15 minutes.
Make and set the jelly
Add 14 ounces of powdered sugar for every 2 pounds of currants and boil for an additional 10 minutes.
Pour the jelly into jars and let it sit for 2 days before covering.
Place brandy papers over the jelly before sealing the jars.
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.
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Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together393 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Black currants
- Provide the fruit flavour, natural pectin and acidity that allow the juice to set into jelly.
- Powdered sugar
- Sweetens the jelly and helps it set by binding water and concentrating the pectin.
The step that matters
Boiling the sugar into the strained juice for 10 minutes. Sugar and pectin need enough boiling to reach the concentration at which the juice gels on cooling. Too little boiling leaves a runny jelly, while overboiling can make it stiff and dull in colour.
“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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