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Dessert

Currant Jelly

Currant jelly is made by extracting juice from red currants, mixing with equal parts white sugar, stirring, pouring into glasses, and setting for three days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Extract the juice from the red currants.

  2. Combine the currant juice and white sugar in equal quantities.

Make and set the jelly

  1. Stir gently and smoothly for three hours.

  2. Pour the mixture into glasses.

  3. Allow it to set for three days until it firms into jelly.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the juice and natural pectin and acid that let the mixture gel into jelly.
White sugar
Sweetens the juice and, with acid, helps the mixture thicken and set.

The step that matters

Stirring for three hours. Gentle, steady stirring dissolves the sugar without incorporating air or scorching the mixture. Overheating or vigorous stirring can break down the pectin needed for a firm set.

“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.

More currant jelly recipes

Red 93Black 55Sauce 50White 38French 11Tartlets 7 See all 365 →

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