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Dessert

Currant Jelly, Red

A clear jelly made from red currants, sugar, and optional isinglass and raspberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 57 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Currant Jelly, Red

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Wash and stem the red currants.

  2. Crush the red currants to extract the juice.

  3. Strain the juice without pressing the fruit to keep the jelly clear.

  4. For better flavor, add a few raspberries or use 1 pint of white currants with 3 pints of red.

Make the jelly

  1. Heat the sugar in the oven until hot but not discolored.

  2. Mix the hot sugar with the hot juice until dissolved.

  3. If using isinglass, dissolve it in a little juice.

  4. Add the dissolved isinglass with the sugar.

  5. Use a silver or wooden spoon to stir the mixture.

  6. Cook the mixture until it reaches the desired consistency, about two hours.

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. Red currant + curranttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. 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

Red currants
Provide the juice, natural pectin and acidity that help the jelly set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, helps the jelly set and preserves it.
Isinglass
A gelling agent that helps the jelly firm up when it cools.

The step that matters

Cooking to the desired consistency. Sugar, acid and pectin only set into a firm jelly once the mixture has cooked long enough to concentrate. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while cooking too long can make it stiff and dull.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red currant, sugar):

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red currant, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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