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Dessert

Black-currant Jelly

A preserve made by boiling black currants with sugar, optionally adding water or red currant juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and red currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 72 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Black-currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pick each black currant individually.

  2. Heat them in a jar set in boiling water.

  3. Squeeze the currants to extract the juice.

  4. If desired, add a little water or red currant juice.

Boil and skim

  1. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

  2. Carefully remove any foam that forms.

  3. Alternatively, clarify the sugar.

  4. Add the whole fruit.

  5. Boil for 20 minutes before straining.

  6. Boil for a few more minutes.

Jar and store

  1. Pour into jars and cover with paper when cool.

  2. The leftover berries can be used to make black currant jam.

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. Black currant + red curranttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. 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

Black currants
Provide the main flavour, colour, and natural pectin that helps the jelly set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the jelly set and keep well.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 30 minutes. Boiling concentrates the juice and sugar so the jelly can reach a gel point. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff or dull in flavour. Skimming foam keeps the jelly clear.

Swap the red currant

The recipe marks red currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (black currant, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Red currantthe original
  3. Blueberryfits less well
  4. Raspberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against black currant, 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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