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Dessert

Black Currant Jelly

A sweet jelly made from black currants and powdered sugar, boiled and set in jars.

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 Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Place black currants in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Mash the currants and bring to a boil.

  3. Remove from heat and drain through a fine sieve.

Make the jelly

  1. Return the liquid to the saucepan and boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Add powdered sugar and boil for an additional 10 minutes.

Jar and seal

  1. Pour the jelly into jars and let it sit for 2 days before sealing.

  2. Cover with brandy‑soaked paper before tying.

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 fruit juice, natural pectin and acidity that help the jelly set and give it its tart flavour.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the jelly set and keep, binding with pectin and acid as it boils.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice with sugar. The jelly sets only when pectin, acid and sugar are in balance and the mixture is boiled long enough to concentrate. Too little boiling after adding sugar leaves a runny jelly that may not keep well.

“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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