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Dessert

Currant Jelly Without Cooking

Currant jelly made by pressing currants, adding sugar, and setting without cooking.

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 ↓

Currant Jelly Without Cooking

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pick currants from stems and wash them, ensuring no water remains.

  2. Press out the juice.

  3. Strain the juice.

Add sugar and set

  1. Add 1 pound of fine white sugar to every pint of juice. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  2. Pour the mixture into cans. Seal the cans.

  3. Place the sealed cans in the hot sun for 2 to 3 days. Alternatively, place the juice in a cool cellar for 24 hours.

  4. Remove the froth that forms on the surface.

  5. Strain the juice through a jelly bag.

Finish and jar

  1. Weigh the juice.

  2. Add an equal weight of powdered sugar. Stir constantly until the sugar is fully dissolved.

  3. Pour into jars.

  4. Cover jars tightly.

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
Provide the juice and natural pectin that lets the jelly set.
Fine white sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps it firm into a jelly as it sets.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar fully. Sugar must dissolve completely before the jelly sets, because undissolved crystals can leave the finished jelly grainy. Stir steadily and wait until no crystals remain.

“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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