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Currant and Raspberry Paste Drops

A dried fruit paste made from currant and raspberry pulp and sugar, formed into coin-sized drops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and raspberry work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 366 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells fruity, sweet. The science ↓

Currant and Raspberry Paste Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Combine the pulp and sugar in a copper sugar boiler or preserving pan over medium heat.

  2. Stir until the mixture reduces enough to show the bottom of the pan when you draw a spoon across it.

Shape and dry

  1. Use a spouted sugar boiler to drop the mixture onto a sheet, forming drops about the size of a coin.

  2. Place the drops in a warm area to dry for about an hour.

  3. Once dried, use a thin knife to remove the drops from the sheet.

Store

  1. Store the drops between sheets of paper in closed boxes in a dry place.

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 + raspberrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together366 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  2. Raspberry + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,101 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. 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

Currant and raspberry pulp
Provides the fruit flavour and most of the liquid that must cook down into a thick paste.
Sifted sugar
Thickens as it cooks down and sets the drops firm, giving them sweetness and body.

The step that matters

Reducing the mixture until it shows the pan bottom. Cooking until the spoon trail shows the pan bottom means enough water has evaporated and the sugar is concentrated. Too little cooking leaves drops that stay sticky and do not set, while overcooking makes them hard and brittle.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raspberry, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raspberry, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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