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 ↓
Jams and Jellies
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Pick fruit when just ripened and remove stems.
Place fruit in a porcelain-lined kettle or a well-scoured brass or tin kettle.
Crush a little fruit and add all to the kettle without water.
Heat the mixture and mash with a potato masher.
Extract the juice
Strain the mixture through a jelly bag, letting it run off before squeezing.
Cook and store
For every pint of juice, add 1 pound of sugar.
Boil the juice for 25 minutes, then add sugar and boil for 5 more minutes.
Pour into glasses to store.
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.
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Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Fruit
- Provides the flavour, colour and natural pectin that help the jam or jelly set.
- Granulated sugar
- Sweetens the preserve and helps it set and keep by binding water.
The step that matters
Boiling the juice with sugar. Boiling drives off water so the sugar concentration rises enough for pectin and acid to gel. Boiling too briefly leaves a runny result, while overcooking can darken and stiffen it.
“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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