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Currant Sweetmeats

Currant Sweetmeats are currants stewed with sugar, then jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and currant 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 ↓

Currant Sweetmeats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the currants

  1. Pick over the currants, removing stems and leaves.

  2. Weigh the currants and place them in a china-lined kettle.

Cook

  1. Warm the currants slowly.

  2. Stew gently for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Add the sugar.

  4. Mix carefully without mashing the fruit.

  5. Once the sugar is dissolved, fill jars quickly.

  6. Cover the jars.

  7. Set the jars aside.

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 + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant 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
Provide the fruit body, tartness and flavour that define the sweetmeat.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at this concentration, helps preserve it and set it into a thick mass.

The step that matters

Stewing the currants gently. Heating slowly and keeping the heat gentle softens the fruit and releases its pectin without scorching the sugar or breaking the currants apart, so the sweetmeat sets evenly.

“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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