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Spiced Currants

A preserved fruit dish made by cooking currants with sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Make the preserve

  1. In a kettle, combine vinegar and sugar and heat until dissolved.

  2. Add the currants, cinnamon, and cloves.

  3. Cook for 1 hour, stirring frequently to prevent burning.

Finish

  1. Once done, strain through a wire sieve to remove seeds.

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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Currant + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Currant + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Currant + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 fruit body and natural pectin that helps the mixture thicken as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens and thickens the mixture, and helps preserve it as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and sharpens the flavour of the fruit.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet spice aroma to the finished preserve.
Cloves
Contributes a strong, warm spice aroma that runs through the preserve.

The step that matters

Stirring during the hour-long cook. Sugar-rich mixtures scorch easily on the bottom of the kettle as they thicken. Frequent stirring keeps the heat even and prevents burnt flavour and sticking.

Swap the currant

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

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

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