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Red Raspberry Jelly

A jelly made from raspberry and currant juices sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Raspberry and currant work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 366 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells fruity, sweet. The science ↓

Red Raspberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juices

  1. Mash the raspberries in a porcelain preserving kettle and boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a linen cloth and measure the juice.

  3. Mash the currants in the preserving kettle, stems included, and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Strain the currant juice and measure it.

Make the jelly

  1. Combine the raspberry and currant juices in the kettle and stir in the sugar.

  2. Once it begins to boil, skim off any foam quickly, as it may set in 5 minutes.

  3. Pour the hot jelly into jelly glasses lined with double writing paper dipped in brandy.

  4. Allow the jelly to cool before sealing with metal covers.

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. Raspberry + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together366 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  2. Raspberry + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,101 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

Raspberry juice
Provides the main flavour and colour, and its natural pectin helps the jelly set.
Currant juice
Adds tartness and extra pectin, helping the jelly set firmly.
White granulated sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, with the acid and pectin, helps it gel.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam quickly once boiling begins. The jelly can set within about 5 minutes, so delaying the skimming can leave foam trapped in the set jelly and spoil its clarity and appearance.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raspberry, 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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