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Dessert

Currant Jam, Black

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

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

Currant Jam, Black

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pulp

  1. Boil the black currants until the juice flows freely.

  2. Pass the fruit through a sieve, discarding any solids.

Cook the jam

  1. Boil the pulp for 5 to 6 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the powdered sugar.

  3. Boil again until the mixture thickens.

  4. Pour into jars 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 pulp, natural pectin and acidity that give the jam its flavour and body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the jam and, with boiling, helps it thicken and set as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Boiling again until the mixture thickens. Sugar must be added off the heat, then boiled to the right concentration. Undercooking leaves the jam runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull. Pectin and acid from the fruit need enough sugar and heat to form a 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.

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