Name: Spiced Currants
Ingredients: 1 pint vinegar; 4 pounds sugar; 2 teaspoons cinnamon; 2 teaspoons allspice; 1 teaspoon cloves; ½ teaspoon mace; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 4 pounds currants

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Currants

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

Make a syrup by combining vinegar and sugar in a pot.
Add cinnamon, allspice, cloves, mace, and salt to the syrup.
Bring the mixture to a boil.

Cook and store

Once boiling, add the currants and boil for 20 minutes.
Store in open glasses like jelly.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,189 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Currants: Provide the main fruit body and bulk of the preserve.
Sugar: Sweetens the preserve and helps it thicken as it cooks down.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the fruit.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, clove, mace):

Figfits better
Orangefits better
Quincefits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, clove, mace. 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.