Name: Jam, White or Red Currant
Ingredients: equal quantity of white or red currants; equal quantity of finely-pounded loaf sugar

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 ↓

Jam, White or Red Currant

Ingredients

equal quantity of white or red currants
equal quantity of finely-pounded loaf sugar

Directions

Pick the fruit carefully.
Layer the currants and sugar alternately in a preserving pan.
Boil for 10 minutes.

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.

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

Currants: Provide the fruit flavour, natural pectin and acidity that give the jam its body and tang.
Loaf sugar: Sweetens the jam and, at this quantity, helps preserve it and set it to a thick gel.

“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.