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Dessert

Redcurrant Jelly

A sweet preserve made from red currants and sugar, boiled until set.

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

Redcurrant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Gather the currants on a fine weather day.

  2. Remove them from the stalks.

  3. Place the currants in a jar. Submerge the jar in a saucepan of boiling water.

  4. Simmer gently until the juice is extracted from the currants.

  5. Strain the juice through a jelly bag or fine cloth without squeezing too much.

  6. Measure the juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Add 3 lb of loaf sugar for every pint of juice.

  2. Combine the juice and sugar in a preserving pan over heat.

  3. Stir continuously.

  4. Remove any scum that rises using a wooden or silver spoon.

  5. Boil for 20 minutes to 1 hour.

  6. Test for firmness by placing a little jelly on a plate to cool.

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. 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 fruit juice that gives the jelly its flavour and tartness.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, with the boiling, helps it set firm.

The step that matters

Boil for 20 minutes to 1 hour. Boiling concentrates the juice and sugar until the pectin and acid can form a gel. Too short a boil leaves the jelly runny, while overboiling can make it stiff and dull in flavour, so the cold plate test is used to check when 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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