Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓
Currant Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Wash the currants.
Boil the currants slowly for 20 minutes without water.
Remove the currants from heat.
Press all the juice from the boiled fruit into a pint measure.
Rinse the kettle.
Pour the juice back into the kettle.
Boil again for 20 minutes.
Remove from heat.
Make and set the jelly
Stir in 1 pound of sugar until fully dissolved.
Pour the hot jelly into 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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Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Provide the pectin and acid that let the juice set into a jelly.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the jelly and helps it set firm when boiled with the juice.
The step that matters
Boil the juice again for 20 minutes. The second boil must be long enough to concentrate the juice and activate the pectin. Too little boiling leaves the jelly runny, while too much can darken the flavour and stiffen it.
“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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