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To Make Red Currant Jelly

A jelly made from red currants and sugar, preserved with brandy papers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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To Make Red Currant Jelly

Why it works: Red currant and brandy work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 105 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

To Make Red Currant Jelly

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Gather dry, ripe currants and strip them of the stalks.

  2. Place currants in a large pot and cover with paper; let sit in a cool oven for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the currants through a cloth.

Make the jelly

  1. For every quart of juice, add 1.5 pounds of broken loaf sugar.

  2. Stir gently over medium heat until the sugar melts.

  3. Skim off any foam and let it boil for 20 minutes.

  4. Pour the hot jelly into pots, cover with brandy papers, 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. Red currant + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  3. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Red currants
Provide the tart fruit juice that sets into the jelly's structure and flavor.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps the jelly set and keep its texture.
Brandy papers
Cover the jelly on top to help protect it during storage.

The step that matters

Skim off any foam and boil for 20 minutes. Foam contains impurities that can cloud the jelly, and boiling concentrates the juice and sugar so the jelly sets properly. Boiling too briefly may leave it runny, while overcooking can make it dull or tough.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Red 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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