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To Preferve Currants for Tarts

A sweet preserve made by boiling currants with sugar and brandy paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Preferve Currants for Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and wash the currants until dry.

Make the preserve

  1. In a preserving pan, combine sugar and enough currant juice to dissolve it.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim off any foam, and add the currants.

  3. Boil until the currants are clear.

Jar and store

  1. Transfer to a jar, cover with brandy paper, and seal tightly.

  2. 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.

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 + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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, natural pectin and tartness that give the preserve its body and flavor.
Sugar
Dissolves into the juice to sweeten the preserve and help it thicken and keep as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil until the currants are clear. Boiling concentrates the sugar and lets the fruit's pectin set, so the preserve thickens and keeps. Stopping too early leaves it runny and prone to spoiling, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull in flavor.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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