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Cnrrant Jelly

A sweet preserve made from currants and sugar, boiled and strained into jars.

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 ↓

Cnrrant Jelly

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the currants

  1. Do not wash the currants; remove leaves and debris.

  2. In a porcelain-lined kettle, mash a few currants with a potato masher to release liquid.

  3. Add the remaining currants and boil for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag into earthen or wooden vessels.

  2. Return the liquid to the kettle and bring to a boil for a moment.

  3. Add the sugar and stir until completely dissolved.

  4. Once dissolved, pour the jelly into jars or glasses.

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
Their natural pectin and acid help the juice set into a firm jelly.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set by binding water and firming the gel.

The step that matters

Stirring while the currants boil. Currants are high in sugar-rich juice that can scorch on the bottom of the kettle. Stirring occasionally spreads heat evenly and prevents burning, which would give the jelly a bitter, scorched taste.

“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.

More currant jelly recipes

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