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Red Currant Jelly

A jelly made from red and white currants with sugar, boiled until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Red Currant Jelly

Why it works: White currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. The science ↓

Red Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Wash and pat the currants into a fine sieve.

  2. Mash the currants with your hands and rub them through the sieve into a preserving pan.

  3. Heat the juice over medium heat, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.

  4. Pour the hot juice into a flannel bag or fine sieve to drain.

Make the jelly

  1. In a large preserving pan, combine 1 pound of sugar for every pint of juice.

  2. Bring to a boil, skimming off any scum that forms.

  3. Boil for about 15 minutes, testing for doneness by placing a drop on a cold plate.

  4. Once set, remove from heat, skim off the scum, and pour into jars.

Store

  1. Cover with brandy-dipped paper and store in a dry place.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together59 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the fruit juice and natural pectin that gel the jelly.
White currants
Add juice and tartness to balance the sweetness of the jelly.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set by binding water and pectin.

The step that matters

Boiling until set. Boiling must go long enough for pectin and sugar to reach the gel point, but not so long that the jelly becomes stiff or darkens. A cold plate test shows whether it has set.

“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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