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To Dry Currants

A method for drying currants by coating them in sugar syrup and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

To Dry Currants

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Layer currants in a porcelain kettle.

  2. Dissolve sugar in water and let the mixture almost boil.

  3. Skim the syrup from the currants.

Dry the currants

  1. Spread the currants on plates to dry in a partly cooled oven.

  2. Boil the syrup until thickened.

  3. Pour the thickened syrup over the currants and dry them together.

Store

  1. Pack the dried currants in jars and cover them tightly.

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. 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

Currants
The fruit being dried, whose flavor and texture concentrate as its moisture evaporates.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, once boiled into a thick syrup, coats the currants and helps preserve them.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thickened. Sugar syrup must reach a thick enough concentration to coat the currants and slow spoilage. Stopping too early leaves the fruit wet and prone to fermenting, while overcooking can make the syrup crystallize or turn hard.

“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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