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Dessert

Spiced Currants

A preserve made by boiling red currants with sugar, vinegar, and spices, then cooling the juice into jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Currants

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the currants

  1. Combine red currants, sugar, and vinegar in a pot.

  2. Boil until the currants break down.

  3. Remove the currants and continue boiling the juice slowly for 1 hour.

Jar and serve

  1. Pour the juice into jars and let cool.

  2. Serve with cold meat.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 base and tart flavor, and their pectin helps the juice thicken as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as the juice reduces, helps build a thick, syrupy body.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar and the fruit.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice slowly for 1 hour. As water evaporates, the juice concentrates and thickens with the sugar. Boiling too hard or unattended can scorch the sugar and make the juice darken or taste burnt, so a gentle simmer is safer.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg. 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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