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Currant Jelly Framboisee

A jelly made from red and white currants and white raspberries sweetened with double-refined sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and white currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Currant Jelly Framboisee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Press the currants and raspberries through a fine sieve to extract the juice.

Cook the jelly

  1. Pour the juice over the broken sugar in a large pot.

  2. Heat the mixture over a brisk fire, skimming off any scum that forms.

  3. When the mixture boils rapidly, stir it and check the consistency by letting it fall from a skimmer.

  4. Once it falls like treacle, remove it from the heat.

  5. The jelly should be rose-colored; using only red currants and raspberries will yield a red jelly.

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 + white curranttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

  3. White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together59 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the bulk of the juice and the tart acidity that gives the jelly its flavor.
White currants
Add juice and pectin-bearing body while lightening the color toward rose.
White raspberries
Contribute aroma and flavor to the juice, balancing the tartness of the currants.
Double-refined sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps it set firmly.

The step that matters

Judging the set by the skimmer test. Sugar and pectin only set properly at the right concentration. Removing the pot from the heat too early leaves a loose jelly, while cooking too long can make it stiff or dull in flavor.

Swap the white currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red currant, sugar):

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red currant, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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