Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓
Currant Paste
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Press the currants through a fine sieve to remove seeds.
Make the paste
Place the currants in a preserving pan over heat and stir until they thicken into a pulpy paste.
Remove from heat and weigh the currant paste.
Add an equal weight of loaf sugar to the paste.
Stir well and boil for a minute until it reaches a jellied consistency.
Set and dry
Pour into molds or on tins and dry as instructed for Quince.
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.
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Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Currants
- Provide the fruit pulp, natural pectin and acidity that help the paste set.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the paste and, with heat, helps it thicken into a firm jelly.
The step that matters
Boil until jellied. Sugar and pectin set only at a high concentration. Boiling briefly after adding the sugar reaches that point, while boiling too long can make the paste stiff, dull and sugary.
“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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