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 ↓
Cueeant Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Jam and strain the currants.
Boil the juice for fifteen minutes without sugar.
Make the jelly
For each pint of juice, add one pound of sugar.
Then boil it for the same time after adding the sugar.
Strain the mixture into glasses.
Pour safely
Wet a towel with cold water and lay it on a table for pouring hot fruit or jelly into cans or glasses.
Set cold cans on the towel and pour the boiling fruit into them.
Do not set two cans on the same spot without first wetting the towel.
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.
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Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 natural pectin and acid, which help the juice thicken and set into jelly.
- Sugar
- Thickens the juice as it boils, adds sweetness, and helps the jelly keep and set firmly.
The step that matters
Boil the juice again after adding the sugar. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugar and pectin. If it is boiled too briefly, the jelly may stay runny and fail to set.
“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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