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Dessert

Black Currant Jam

A jam made from black currants, water, and cane sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Black Currant Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the currants well.

Make the jam

  1. Put the currants in a pan with water and bring to a boil.

  2. Simmer until the skins are soft, about 10 minutes.

  3. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

  4. Boil quickly until reaching the setting point, about 20 minutes.

  5. Skim off any foam.

  6. Allow to cool slightly, then pour into jars.

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. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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 fruit, pectin and tartness that give the jam its flavour and body.
Cane sugar
Sweetens the jam and, at high concentration, helps it set and keep.

The step that matters

Boil quickly until reaching the setting point. Setting depends on sugar and pectin reaching the right concentration. Boiling too gently or too long can leave the jam runny or cause it to darken and taste caramelised.

“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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