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Dessert

Black Currant Jam

A jam made from rhubarb juice, black currants, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Rhubarb and black currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Black Currant Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare rhubarb for jelly to obtain 3 pints of juice.

Make the jam

  1. In a preserving kettle, combine rhubarb juice and sugar, stirring until it boils.

  2. Add black currants and boil for 15 minutes or until the currants are tender.

  3. Seal in small jars.

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. Rhubarb + black curranttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + black curranttop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb juice
Provides the liquid base and tartness that balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps it set.
Black currants
Supply the main fruit flavour and body of the jam.

The step that matters

Boiling the currants. Boil only until the currants are tender and the mixture thickens; overcooking can darken the flavour and break down the fruit, while underboiling can leave the jam too loose to set.

Swap the black currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Black currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rhubarb, 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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