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Dried Currants

A method of preserving currants by boiling them in sugar syrup and drying them.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Dried Currants

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 ↓

Dried Currants

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and cook the syrup

  1. Place the currants in a preserving kettle.

  2. Sprinkle half the sugar over the currants.

  3. Dissolve the sugar.

  4. Boil for 1-2 minutes.

  5. Skim the syrup.

Dry the currants

  1. Spread the syrup on plates to dry in a cool oven (300°F/150°C).

  2. Boil the remaining syrup until thick.

  3. Pour the thick syrup over the currants to dry with them.

Pack and seal

  1. Pack the dried currants in jars.

  2. Seal the jars tightly.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Dried currants
Form the fruit base, which dries into a chewy, concentrated bite.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, concentrated in syrup, dries onto the currants to help preserve them.

The step that matters

Boil the remaining syrup until thick. Sugar concentration lowers the water available for spoilage, so the syrup must reach a thick, heavily sugared state before it is poured over the currants. Under-boiling leaves too much water, so the fruit stays sticky and keeps poorly.

“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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