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To Preserve Currants for Tarts

Currants preserved in sugar and juice for use in tarts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

To Preserve Currants for Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Pick and wash the currants until dry.

  2. In a preserving pan, combine the sugar with enough currant juice to dissolve it.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil and skim off any foam.

Cook and store

  1. Add the currants and boil until they are clear.

  2. Transfer the currants to a jar, cover with brandy paper, and seal tightly.

  3. 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 + 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 itself and most of the texture of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it by drawing out water.
Currant juice
Dissolves the sugar so it forms a syrup that cooks the currants evenly.

The step that matters

Boil the currants until clear. Cooking in a concentrated sugar syrup draws water out of the fruit and helps it keep. Stop once the currants look clear, since longer boiling can break them down and make them tough.

“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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