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Dessert

Currant Lozenges, Black

A dried sweet made from black currants, sugar, and isinglass.

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 Lozenges, Black

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Place 3 quarts of ripe black currants in a preserving pan.

  2. Simmer gently until the juice flows freely.

  3. Bruise the fruit with a wooden spoon.

  4. Squeeze the fruit through a sieve.

  5. Press to extract as much juice as possible.

  6. Return the juice to the pan.

Make the lozenge mixture

  1. Add ¼ pound of brown sugar for every pint of juice.

  2. Boil for 45 minutes.

  3. Add ½ ounce of dissolved isinglass for every quart of juice.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Pour the mixture thinly over plates.

Dry and store

  1. Place before the fire to dry for three days.

  2. Store the dried cakes in a tin box with white paper between each.

  3. Cut into lozenges as needed.

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

Ripe black currants
Provide the fruit juice that forms the base and gives the lozenges their flavour and colour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and body, and helps the juice thicken into a firm, chewable mass as it boils.
Isinglass
A gelatin-like protein that sets the cooked juice into a firm, sliceable lozenge when dried.

The step that matters

Boil for 45 minutes. The juice must be boiled long enough for the sugar to concentrate and the mixture to thicken. Too short a boil leaves it too wet to dry into firm lozenges, while overcooking can scorch the sugar and darken the flavour.

“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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