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Dessert

Black-currant Jelly

A sweet preserve made from black currants and sugar, boiled and set into jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Black-currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pick each currant individually.

  2. Heat them in a pot set in boiling water.

  3. Squeeze the currants to extract the juice, using 1 pint of juice for every pound of sugar.

  4. If desired, add a little water to the mixture.

Cook

  1. Boil for 1 hour.

  2. Carefully remove any foam that forms.

  3. Alternatively, combine the sugar with whole fruit.

  4. Boil for 20 minutes.

Strain and jar

  1. Strain, then boil the strained mixture for a few additional minutes.

  2. Pour into jars.

  3. Seal with paper when 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. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Black currants
Provide the fruit flavor, acidity and natural pectin that help the jelly set.
Sugar
Helps the jelly set and thicken, and preserves it for storage.

The step that matters

Judging when the jelly is cooked enough. Jelly sets when sugar, acid and pectin reach the right concentration. Stopping the boil too early leaves it runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff and cloudy.

“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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