Why it works: White currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. The science ↓
Currant Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Pick over the currants, removing leaves and poor fruit. Wash and drain if dirty, but do not stem them.
Mash the currants in a porcelain kettle with a wooden pestle without heating.
Let the mashed currants drain in a flannel bag overnight without squeezing.
Make the jelly
In the morning, measure 1 bowl of sugar for each bowl of juice and heat the sugar in an earthen dish in the oven, stirring often.
Boil the juice for twenty minutes and skim thoroughly.
Add the hot sugar to the juice and boil for 3 to 5 minutes until it thickens on a spoon.
Jar and seal
Turn the jelly into glasses and let them sit in the sun for several days.
Cover with paper dipped in brandy and paste paper over the tops of the glasses.
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.
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White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together59 recipes
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Currants
- Their natural pectin and acid let the juice set into a firm jelly.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the jelly and helps it set by binding water and concentrating the juice.
The step that matters
Boiling the juice and sugar until it thickens on a spoon. Sugar and pectin only gel at a high enough concentration. Too little boiling leaves the jelly runny, while overboiling can make it dense and sticky. Testing on a cold spoon shows when it has reached the setting point.
“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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