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Currant Paste

A sweet paste made from currants and sugar, boiled to a thick consistency and molded or cut into shapes.

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 pulp

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

  2. Reduce the currants in a pan over heat, stirring constantly until it forms a paste.

  3. Weigh the pulp and add 1 pound 6 ounces of loaf sugar.

Cook the paste

  1. Clarify the mixture and boil it until it reaches a feather stage.

  2. Mix the paste with the sugar and boil again.

Set and shape

  1. Pour the mixture into molds or spread it thin on tin plates and cut into desired shapes.

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 pulp that forms the body and flavor of the paste.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps it thicken and set as it boils.

The step that matters

Boiling to the feather stage. Sugar syrup concentrates as water evaporates, and the feather stage marks the point where it is thick enough to set firm. Stopping too early leaves the paste soft and sticky, while boiling too long can make it hard and brittle.

“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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