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Red Raspberry and Currant Jelly

A jelly made from currants and raspberries sweetened with hot sugar.

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

Red Raspberry and Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Cook currants with 4 cups of water separately until soft.

  2. Drain the currants and measure the juice.

  3. Cook raspberries with 2 cups of water separately until soft.

  4. Drain the raspberries and measure the juice.

  5. Combine the currant and raspberry juices.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

  2. Add an equal amount of hot sugar and boil for 5 minutes or longer.

  3. Test for jelling by cooling a spoonful quickly; if it doesn't set, cook a few minutes longer.

  4. Skim off any foam and pour the jelly into glasses.

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 + 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

Currants
Their natural pectin and acid help the juice set into a firm jelly.
Raspberries
Their juice adds flavour and colour to the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set by binding water and concentrating the pectin.

The step that matters

Testing for jelling. Sugar and pectin only set when the mixture is boiled long enough to reach the right concentration. Undercooked jelly stays runny, while overcooking can make it stiff, so the quick cold spoon test shows whether it is ready.

“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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