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Dessert

Spiced Currants

A preserve of currants boiled with sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Spiced Currants

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the currants

  1. Place the currants in a kettle and mash them slightly to release their juice and prevent scorching.

  2. Remove about 1 pint of juice for jelly, if desired.

Cook

  1. Add the sugar, vinegar, and mixed spices to the kettle.

  2. Boil the mixture for about 1 hour.

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 + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. 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
Provides the bulk of the fruit, with natural pectin that helps the mixture thicken.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it concentrates during boiling, helps the mixture set and keep.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and sharpens the fruit flavor.
Mixed spices
Adds warm aroma and flavor that complement the tart fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for about 1 hour. Once sugar is added, the mixture thickens as it boils and can scorch on the base of the kettle. Mashing the currants first to release juice helps prevent this.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar. 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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