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Spiced Currants

A sweet and spiced currant preserve made with cinnamon, allspice, vinegar, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Cook the fruit

  1. Combine currants, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, vinegar, and cloves in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 1 hour, stirring frequently.

Finish

  1. For added flavor, strain the currants and mix in unstrained gooseberries.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar 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 main fruit body and tart flavor of the dish.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the sugar.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and sweet spice flavor.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor.
Cloves
Adds strong aromatic spice flavor in small amounts.

The step that matters

Stirring while the mixture boils. Fruit mixtures high in sugar thicken as water evaporates, and the sugar can scorch on the bottom of the pot. Frequent stirring keeps the heat even and prevents burnt flavor.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, sugar, allspice, vinegar, 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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