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Dessert

Red-currant Jelly

A sweet jelly made from red currants and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and red currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Red-currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Gather the currants.

  2. Remove the currants from the stalks.

  3. Place the currants in a jar.

Extract the juice

  1. Submerge the jar in a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Simmer gently until the juice is extracted.

  3. Strain the juice through a fine cloth jelly bag.

  4. Measure the juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Add ¾ pound of loaf sugar for each pint of juice.

  2. Stir the mixture over heat.

  3. Remove any scum that forms with a wooden or silver spoon.

  4. Boil for 20 to 30 minutes.

  5. Test for firmness by placing a little jelly on a plate to cool.

Pot and store

  1. Pour the jelly into small jars.

  2. Cover the jars with oiled paper.

  3. Cover with tissue paper brushed with egg white.

  4. Label the jars with the date.

  5. Store in a dry place.

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. Sugar + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and, with the fruit's acid and pectin, helps the juice set into jelly.
Red currants
Supply the juice, natural pectin and acidity that give the jelly its flavour and set.

The step that matters

Testing for firmness. Jelly sets when pectin, acid and sugar reach the right concentration. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff, so the cold-plate test shows whether it is ready.

“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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