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Dessert

Spiced Currants

A preserved fruit mixture of currants, sugar, spices, and vinegar boiled and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Currants

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over, wash, and stem the currants.

Cook and jar

  1. In a granite or porcelain-lined kettle, combine currants, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and vinegar.

  2. Boil for 1.5 hours.

  3. Pour into jars and seal when cool.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Currant + cidertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh currants
Provide the fruit that forms the body and tartness of the preserve.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens and, as it concentrates during boiling, thickens the fruit into a preserve.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the preserve stable.
Ground cloves
Contribute warm, pungent aroma to the spiced flavour.
Ground cinnamon
Contributes sweet, warm aroma to the spiced flavour.
Allspice
Adds a blended warm aroma that rounds out the spice mix.

The step that matters

Boil for 1.5 hours. During the long boil, water evaporates and the sugar and fruit concentrate and thicken into a preserve. Too short a boil leaves it runny and less stable, while sugar-rich mixtures can scorch on the base of the kettle if left to burn.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, clove, cinnamon, allspice, cider, vinegar):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, cinnamon, allspice, cider, vinegar. 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.

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