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Dessert

Spiced Currants

A jam made from currants simmered with cinnamon, cloves, allspice, mace, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Currants

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Tie the cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and mace in a small bag.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the currants with the spice bag and sugar until it thickens into a jam.

  2. When nearly done, add the vinegar.

  3. Transfer to tumblers or glass jars like currant jelly.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Currants
Provide the fruit base and pectin that thicken the mixture into a jelly-like set.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps it thicken and set as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the spiced fruit flavor.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet aroma to the spiced currant preserve.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar near the end. Vinegar is added when the mixture is nearly done so its sharp acidity and flavor remain noticeable rather than being cooked off during the long boil.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, clove, allspice, mace, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, clove, allspice, mace, vinegar, 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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