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Currant Paste

A sweet paste made from currants and sugar, cooked until thick and set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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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 the paste

  1. Pass currants through a fine sieve to remove seeds.

  2. Cook the currants over low heat, stirring constantly until they form a paste.

  3. Weigh the paste.

Make the sugar mixture

  1. Add 1 ½ pounds of loaf sugar for every 1 ¼ pounds of paste.

  2. Clarify the mixture.

  3. Boil until it reaches a feather stage.

Set and shape

  1. Mix thoroughly and boil again.

  2. Pour into molds or spread on tin plates.

  3. Cut into desired shapes once set.

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 + 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

Currants
Provide the fruit flavor and the thick body of the paste as they cook down.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and, once concentrated by boiling, helps the paste set firm.

The step that matters

Boil to the feather stage. Sugar concentration controls how firmly the paste sets. Boiling too little leaves it soft and sticky, while boiling too long makes it hard and brittle once cooled.

“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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