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Dessert

Currant Meat Relish

A sweet relish made from currants, oranges, sugar, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Currant Meat Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the rind of the oranges and cut the pulp into bits.

Cook and seal

  1. Combine currants, grated orange rind, orange pulp, granulated sugar, and seeded raisins in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

  3. Seal the relish in jars while hot.

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. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Orange + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 tart fruit base and much of the relish's body as they break down.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the relish and helps preserve it by binding water and inhibiting spoilage.
Seeded raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the cooked relish.
Oranges
Contribute acidity and aromatic citrus flavor from the rind and pulp.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 30 minutes. Sugar and fruit must simmer long enough to thicken and reduce the liquid. Too short a boil leaves the relish runny and less stable on the shelf.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, raisin. 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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