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Dessert

Black Currant Jam

Jam made from black currants and loaf sugar, cooked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Black Currant Jam

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Place black currants, stalks included, in a preserving pan.

  2. Heat in a 300°F (150°C) oven until soft.

  3. Rub through a cane sieve to remove stalks.

Make the jam

  1. Add an equal weight of broken loaf sugar to the currants.

  2. Boil over medium heat for about 15 minutes.

  3. Test for doneness by dropping a small amount on a cold plate; it should set in about a minute.

Pot and cover

  1. Pour into pots and cover once cooled.

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. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Black currants
Provide the fruit flesh, natural pectin and acidity that give the jam its flavour and body.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it set and keep by binding water and thickening the fruit.

The step that matters

Testing for set. Boiling drives off water and concentrates pectin and sugar. Overcooking can make the jam stiff, while undercooking leaves it runny, so a cold-plate test shows whether it is ready.

“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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