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Dessert

Black Currant Jam

Jam made from black currants and bruised sugar, cooked until it jellies.

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 Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and cut the tops off the currants.

Make the jam

  1. In a large pot, combine the currants and bruised sugar.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the mixture jellies, about 30 minutes.

  3. Pour into sterilized jars and seal.

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, pectin and tartness that give the jam its flavor and body.
Bruised sugar
Sweetens the jam and, as it dissolves and concentrates, helps the mixture set into a gel.

The step that matters

Cooking until the mixture jellies. Sugar and fruit pectin need enough heat and time to concentrate and set; stopping too early leaves a runny jam, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull in flavor.

“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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