Currants to Wash
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Wash
Place the dried currants in a large pan filled with cold or tepid water.
Gently rub the currants through your hands to loosen any sand.
Pour off the water, leaving the sand behind.
Fill two pans with clean, cold water.
Put a small quantity of currants in a wire sieve and shake it in the water.
Dry and pick over
After rinsing, place the currants in an iron baking pan.
Set the pan in a 350°F (175°C) oven to dry, stirring occasionally.
Remove them when the water has evaporated but before they become hard.
Carefully pick through the currants to remove any small stones.
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.
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The step that matters
Removing the currants from the oven. Drying should stop once the surface water has evaporated. Leaving them in longer drives out moisture from inside the fruit, so they harden instead of staying plump and tender.
“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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