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Dessert

Black Currant Jam

A jam made from ripe black currants and sugar, cooked until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Black Currant Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather ripe black currants on a fine day, removing stalks and tops.

  2. Combine the currants and sugar in a preserving pan.

Cook the jam

  1. Let the mixture sit near the fire until the sugar dissolves.

  2. Stir the mixture and bring it to a boil.

  3. Skim off any foam and simmer until it thickens.

Store

  1. Pour the jam into pots for storage.

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. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Black currants
Provide the fruit, pectin and acidity that give the jam its flavour and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, at high concentration, helps it thicken and keep.

The step that matters

Skim off any foam and simmer until it thickens. Foam is trapped air and impurities that can cloud the jam, and the jam only sets once enough water has evaporated and the sugar and fruit pectin reach the right concentration. Undercooking leaves it runny; overcooking can make it stiff or 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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