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Red Currant Jelly

A sweet jelly made from red and white currants, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Red Currant Jelly

Why it works: Red currant and currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 57 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Red Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pick the red and white currants and pass them through a coarse sieve.

  2. Place the currants in a pan with a little water and heat until boiling.

  3. Remove from heat, skim off the scum, and strain the juice through a flannel bag.

Make the jelly

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the pint of juice and boil for 20 minutes over medium heat.

  2. Skim off any scum and pour the jelly into pots.

Cover and set

  1. Once firm, cover with stout paper dipped in brandy.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Red currant + curranttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. White currant + curranttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Red currant + white curranttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Red currant + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the main fruit flavour and the natural pectin that helps the jelly set.
White currants
Add more juice and tartness to the fruit base of the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, with boiling, helps it thicken and set.

The step that matters

Boiling the sweetened juice. Boiling the sugar and juice for the full time concentrates the liquid and drives off water so the jelly reaches its setting point. Undercooking leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it dense and dull in flavour.

Swap the white currant

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

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red currant, sugar, currant, brandy. 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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