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To Make Red Currant Jelly

A jelly made from red currants and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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To Make Red Currant Jelly

Why it works: Red currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

To Make Red Currant Jelly

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Gather your currants when they are dry and fully ripe.

  2. Put them in a large pot and cover with paper; let stand in a cool oven for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the mixture through a cloth.

Make the jelly

  1. For every quart of juice, add 1.5 pounds of sugar and stir gently over a clear fire until the sugar melts.

  2. Skim the mixture well and let it boil quickly for 20 minutes.

Pot and store

  1. Pour the hot jelly into pots immediately; do not let it stand or it will break.

  2. 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 + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Their natural pectin and acidity help the juice set into a firm, tart jelly.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps it gel and keep.

The step that matters

Pour the hot jelly into pots immediately. Jelly sets as it cools, so it must go into the pots while still hot. If it stands, it begins to gel in the pot and can set unevenly or break when portioned.

“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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