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Dessert

Red Currant Solid

A firm jelly made from red currant jelly, cream, sugar, isinglass, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Red Currant Solid

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Dissolve the red currant jelly in the cream and add sugar if necessary.

  2. Dissolve the isinglass in the water.

  3. Stir the dissolved isinglass into the jelly and cream mixture.

  4. Whisk the mixture for a few minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Pour it into a dampened earthenware mold and set it in a cool place.

  2. When ready to serve, carefully turn it out onto a glass dish.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Red currant + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Red currant jelly
Provides the fruit flavour, tartness and pink colour of the dessert.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the set dessert.
Isinglass
Gelatine-like setting agent that firms the cream and jelly mixture as it cools.

The step that matters

Stir the isinglass into the jelly and cream mixture. Isinglass must be fully dissolved before it is added, and the mixture must be evenly combined, so that it sets uniformly without lumps or streaks.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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