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Currant Paste

A sweet paste made from currants boiled with water and sugar, then dried and shaped.

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 ↓

Currant Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the currants

  1. Strip the currants and add a little juice to prevent burning.

  2. Boil the currants well, then rub them through a fine sieve.

  3. Boil the strained mixture for 15 minutes.

Make and dry the paste

  1. Add 1½ pounds of sugar to 1 pint of juice, stirring until melted.

  2. Pour the mixture onto plates and dry it in a cool place.

  3. Shape the dried paste as desired.

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
Supply the fruit pulp and tart flavour that form the body of the paste.
Sugar
Sweetens the paste and, as it cooks down, helps it set into a firm, shapeable mass.

The step that matters

Boil the strained mixture for 15 minutes. Sugar and fruit must concentrate enough to set. Boiling evaporates water and raises the sugar level, so the paste dries firm rather than soft or sticky.

“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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