Name: Currant Water Made of Jelly
Ingredients: 2 large tablespoons currant jelly; ½ cup warm water; ⅓ cup syrup; 2-3 lemons; water to taste; a pinch of cochineal

Why it works: Currant and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,270 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Currant Water Made of Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Mix currant jelly with warm water.
Add syrup and squeeze in the juice of 2-3 lemons.
Fill the rest with water to your taste.
Add a pinch of cochineal for color.
Strain through a sieve before serving.

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.

Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,270 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,235 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Currant + syruptop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together329 recipes

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Currant jelly: Provides the main fruit flavor and a tart, sweet base for the drink.
Syrup: Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the lemon juice.
Lemons: Add acidity and brightness that lift the sweetness of the jelly and syrup.
Cochineal: Gives the drink a red color.