Name: Logan and Currant Jam
Ingredients: 2 cups currant juice; 2 cups sugar (for currants); 2 cups logan berries; 2 cups sugar (for logan berries)

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 ↓

Logan and Currant Jam

Ingredients

2 cups currant juice
2 cups sugar (for currants)
2 cups logan berries
2 cups sugar (for logan berries)

Directions

Squeeze the juice out of the currants and mix with an equal amount of sugar.
Boil for 10 minutes.
Add the loganberries and sprinkle with an equal amount of sugar.
Let it stand overnight.
Do not cook long enough to harden the seeds.
Transfer to jelly 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.

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

Sugar: Sweetens the fruit and helps the jam set as it thickens.
Currant juice: Provides acidity and natural pectin that help the jam gel.
Loganberries (in the method): Supply the main fruit flavour and body of the jam.

The step that matters

Do not cook long enough to harden the seeds. Overcooking hardens the seeds and turns the jam tough and bitter. Stopping the boil early keeps the texture soft and the flavour fresh.

“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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Logan and Currant Jam