Skip to main content
Dessert

Currants, Conserve of

A sweet preserve made from currants and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and red currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Currants, Conserve of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Dry the currants in a pan.

  2. Press them through a sieve.

Make the preserve

  1. Put the currants back on the fire, stirring constantly until you can see the bottom of the pan.

  2. Dissolve and boil the sugar until it reaches a syrup consistency.

  3. Pour the sugar over the fruit, stirring continually.

  4. Remove from heat when it bubbles, stirring as before.

Finish

  1. Pour into molds.

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. Sugar + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, once concentrated, helps the preserve thicken and keep.
Red currants
Provide the tart fruit flavour and natural pectin that helps the preserve set.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar to syrup consistency. Sugar concentration controls how the preserve sets. Stopping too early leaves it loose and runny, while boiling too long makes it stiff and sticky.

“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.

More currant preserve recipes

Black 3Raspberry 3 See all 22 →

You might also like

Red Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesCurrant and Raspberry IceCurrant and Raspberry Ice7 recipes