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Black Currant Preserves

A preserve made by boiling black currants with red currant juice and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and red currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 72 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Black Currant Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather the currants on a dry day.

  2. Clip off the heads and stalks with scissors.

Make the preserves

  1. In a preserving pan, combine the currants, red currant juice, and sugar.

  2. Shake frequently until it boils.

  3. Carefully remove the fruit from the sides of the pan and skim off the scum as it rises.

  4. Let it boil for 10 to 15 minutes.

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. Black currant + red curranttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Black currants
Provide the main fruit flavor and, with their natural pectin, help the preserves set.
Red currant juice
Adds extra fruit liquid and tartness, helping the fruit cook down into a spreadable mass.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens and preserves the fruit, and with boiling helps it thicken into a set preserve.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum as it rises. Foam that forms on boiling fruit contains impurities that can cloud the preserves and spoil their flavor if left in. Removing it as it rises keeps the preserves clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (black currant, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Red currantthe original
  3. Blueberryfits less well
  4. Raspberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against black currant, 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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