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Dessert

Currants in Sugar

Currants coated in beaten egg whites and powdered sugar, then dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Currants in Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slightly beat the egg whites and drain them through a fine sieve into a pan.

Coat the currants

  1. Place the fresh currants in a pan and pour a little of the drained egg whites over them.

  2. Roll the currants well in the egg whites, then coat them in powdered sugar.

  3. Shake off any excess sugar and place the currants on a fine sieve to dry.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant 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

Egg whites
Bind the sugar to the currant skins, forming a thin glossy shell as they dry.
Powdered sugar
Forms a sweet, dry crust that gives the currants a crisp, frosted coating.
Fresh currants
Provide the tart fruit core that the sweet coating contrasts against.

The step that matters

Drying the coated currants. Excess sugar must be shaken off and the currants left to dry on a sieve so the coating sets evenly instead of becoming sticky or clumped. Egg white dries into a firm film as its water evaporates, so air circulation matters.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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