Skip to main content
Dessert

Currant Jelly, Red and White

A jelly made from currants and sugar, boiled until caramel consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 them until they just begin to boil.

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

  4. Check if the juice is clear.

  5. If it is not clear, strain it again.

  6. Measure the amount of juice and use an equal amount of sugar.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the juice and sugar mixture until it almost reaches caramel consistency.

  2. Add the jelly to the pot.

  3. Boil for ten minutes.

  4. Skim off any foam.

  5. Remove from heat.

Jar

  1. Pour the jelly 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 the juice, pectin and acid that let the jelly set.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps the jelly set and keep.

The step that matters

Boil the juice and sugar mixture until it almost reaches caramel consistency. Boiling concentrates the sugar and juice so pectin and acid can form a gel. Too little boiling leaves the jelly runny, while too much can scorch the sugar and darken the flavour.

“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 →

You might also like

Currant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesCurrant and Raspberry IceCurrant and Raspberry Ice7 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes