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Currant Water Made of Jelly

A clear beverage made by mixing currant jelly, water, syrup, lemon juice, and cochineal.

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

  1. Mix the currant jelly with warm water.

  2. Add the syrup and squeeze in the juice of 2-3 lemons.

  3. Fill the rest with water to your taste.

  4. Add a pinch of cochineal for color.

  5. 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.

  1. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. 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 fruity flavor and sweetness, and dissolves into the warm water to form the base.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and body to balance the tartness of the lemon juice.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright citrus aroma that give the drink its refreshing tang.
Cochineal
Colors the drink a deep red.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, lemon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, lemon. 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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