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To Preserve Currants for Tarts

Preserves currants with 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

  1. Pick the currants when they are dry.

Make the preserves

  1. In a preserving pan, combine the currants with sugar and enough juice to dissolve it.

  2. Bring to a boil, skimming off any foam.

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

Jar and store

  1. Transfer to a jar, cover with brandy paper, and tie down.

  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 + 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, pectin and tartness that form the body of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, at high concentration, helps it set and keep.

The step that matters

Boil until the currants are clear. Boiling with sugar thickens the syrup and softens the fruit. Stop too early and the preserve stays runny; boil too long and it can turn stiff and dark.

“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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