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Dessert

Currants, Conserve of

A preserve made by drying, sieving, and cooking red currants with sugar into a syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and sugar 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. Remove the seeds from the red currants.

  2. Place the seedless currants in a silver pan over heat to dry.

  3. Press the currants through a sieve.

  4. Return the sieved currants to the heat, stirring constantly until the bottom of the pan is visible.

Make the conserve

  1. Dissolve and boil the sugar until it reaches a syrupy consistency.

  2. Pour the syrup over the currants while stirring continuously.

  3. Remove from heat once it bubbles, continuing to stir.

  4. Pour the mixture 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. Red currant + sugartop 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

Red currants
Provide the fruit base, along with natural pectin and tartness that give the conserve its body and bright flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, once boiled into syrup, thickens and helps the conserve set as it cools.

The step that matters

Return the sieved currants to the heat until the bottom of the pan is visible. Stirring off the excess liquid concentrates the pulp so the conserve will thicken properly. Too much moisture left in the fruit can keep the set loose once the sugar is added.

“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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