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Dessert

Currant Jam, Red and White

A jam made from red or white currants and sugar, boiled and preserved in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: White currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. The science ↓

Currant Jam, Red and White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather currants on a dry day, ensuring they are fresh and free from dirt.

  2. Strip the currants from the stalks and place them in a preserving pan with an equal weight of sugar.

Cook and store

  1. Heat the mixture and let it boil for exactly nine minutes.

  2. Pour the jam into jars and cover with brandied paper, then seal with tissue paper dipped in gum.

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. White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together59 recipes

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 body and bright flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, as it concentrates while boiling, helps it set and keeps it preserved.

The step that matters

Boiling for exactly nine minutes. Boiling too briefly leaves the jam runny and prone to spoiling, while boiling too long can darken the flavour and overcook the fruit. Sugar and pectin need enough heat and time to reach the concentration required to 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.

More currant jam recipes

Black 54Red 28White 17Raspberry 5Spiced 5Green 4 See all 57 →

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