Skip to main content
Dessert

Frosted Currants

A confection of red currants coated in egg white and boiled sugar syrup, then dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Frosted Currants

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick fine, large bunches of red currants that are not too ripe.

Coat the currants

  1. Dip each bunch into frothed egg white, then into thick boiled sugar syrup.

  2. Drain the bunches on a sieve and let them dry partially.

  3. Dip the bunches into the boiled syrup again.

  4. Repeat the process a third time.

Dry and finish

  1. Sprinkle powdered sugar over them and lay on a sheet of paper.

  2. Place in a slightly warm oven to dry.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

  4. Red currant + syruptop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together76 recipes
  5. Red currant + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the fruit that is coated and dried into a crisp, sweet shell.
Egg white
Forms a thin binding film that helps the sugar syrup cling to the currants.
Sugar syrup
Builds a crisp, glassy sugar coating that preserves the fruit's shape when dry.
Powdered sugar
Adds a dry, frosted surface finish and a light sweetness.

The step that matters

Partially drying between syrup dips. Letting each coat dry partly before the next dip lets the syrup layers set and build up. Wet layers can slide off or stay sticky, leaving the coating uneven.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, syrup):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, syrup. 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.

You might also like

Red Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesOranges in SyrupOranges in Syrup9 recipes