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Dessert

Currant Jelly

Currant jelly made by cooking currants, extracting juice, adding sugar, boiling, and setting in glasses.

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 Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Wash the currants in cold water.

  2. Cook the currants with 1 cup of water in an enameled kettle, stirring constantly for 30 minutes to 1 hour to extract the juice.

  3. Remove the fruit and place it in a cheesecloth jelly bag to drain without squeezing.

  4. Return the pulp to the stove, cover with water, and cook for another 30 minutes, stirring slowly.

  5. Strain the juice again and mix it with the first batch.

Make the jelly

  1. Measure the juice carefully by cups; for each cup of juice, add ¾ cup of sugar.

  2. Cook no more than 10 cups of juice at a time.

  3. Heat the dry sugar in the oven.

  4. Once the juice reaches a boil, let it boil steadily for 10 minutes.

  5. Add the hot sugar and boil for another 10 minutes.

  6. Perform the jelly test: the jelly should sheet off the spoon or drop in jelly form.

Pot and seal

  1. Pour the jelly into clean glasses, filling nearly to the top.

  2. To avoid breaking glasses, pour the jelly through a funnel and place the glasses on a moist cloth.

  3. Once the jelly is set and cold, cover with hot paraffin and place a tin cover over it.

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 juice and natural pectin and acid that give the jelly its body and tang.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and, with boiling, helps the jelly set to a firm, spoonable texture.

The step that matters

Perform the jelly test. Jelly sets only when enough water has boiled off and sugar and pectin reach the right concentration. Undercooked jelly stays runny, while overcooked jelly turns stiff and grainy. Testing on a cold spoon shows when it is ready.

“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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