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Dessert

Black Currant Drops

A sweet jelly made from black currants and powdered sugar, then dropped onto sheets and baked until dry.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the currant jelly

  1. Mash the black currants in a pan with a spatula.

  2. Heat the mashed currants over the fire until just boiling.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve into an earthenware pot.

  4. Boil the jelly for 2 hours, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

Make and dry the drops

  1. Mix in the powdered sugar and stir over the fire for 30 minutes.

  2. Drop the mixture onto pewter sheets or plates using a knife.

  3. Place in a hot oven until completely dry, then remove with a knife.

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. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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 main fruit flavour, tartness and natural pectin that helps the mixture set.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the mixture and, once cooked down, gives the drops their firm, dry body.

The step that matters

Stirring the jelly while it boils. Sugary fruit mixtures scorch easily on the bottom of a pot over direct heat. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and prevents burnt flavour and dark specks.

“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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