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Dessert

Spiced Currants

A preserved fruit made by boiling currants with spices, sugar, and vinegar, then storing in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Prepare the spices

  1. Grind the cinnamon, cloves, mace, and allspice together.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the currants with the spices tied in a bag and the sugar until it forms a thick syrup.

  2. When nearly done, add the vinegar.

Store

  1. Pour into jelly tumblers or glass jars for storage.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mace + allspicetop 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
Provides the main fruit body and natural pectin that helps the syrup thicken.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and thickens the boiling liquid into a syrup.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the fruit.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the fruit.
Cloves
Adds strong, warm aroma and spice flavor.

The step that matters

Boil until the syrup is thick. Sugar and fruit pectin only set into a thick syrup after enough boiling to concentrate the liquid. Stopping too early leaves it runny and prone to spoiling, while overcooking can make the sugar darken and taste burnt.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

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