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Red Currant Jelly

A jelly made from red currants and sugar, boiled and cooled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Red Currant Jelly

Why it works: Red currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Red Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Wash the currants and drain them.

  2. Mash the currants with the back of a spoon.

  3. Place the mashed currants in a jelly bag and squeeze to extract all the juice.

Make the jelly

  1. In a kettle, combine the juice and sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes, skimming off any foam.

Set and cover

  1. Pour the warm jelly into glasses and let it cool.

  2. Once cool, cover with brandy paper.

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. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the juice and natural pectin and acidity that give the jelly its body and tartness.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the juice and, with the boiling, helps the mixture thicken and set as it cools.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice with sugar. The mixture must reach a full boil long enough for pectin and sugar to interact and concentrate. Too short a boil leaves the jelly runny; boiling too long can darken and dull the flavour. Skimming removes foam so the jelly is clear.

“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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