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Spiced Currants

A preserved condiment made from red currants, sugar, vinegar, and spices.

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 the currants, sugar, and vinegar in a pot.

  2. Boil until the currants break down.

  3. Remove the currants.

Finish the juice

  1. Continue boiling the juice slowly for 1 hour.

  2. Pour the juice into jars and 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
Fruit provides the main body, acidity and flavour, and breaks down to release juice.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and, concentrated by boiling, helps it thicken and keep.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sugar and helps preserve the juice.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice for 1 hour. Boiling concentrates the juice and its sugar, so the heat must stay slow and steady. A hard, long boil can scorch the sugar, darken the juice and make it too thick.

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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