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
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Extract juice from currants as directed in the recipe for Currant Wine.
Make the jelly
In a granite stew pan, boil the juice until half of it has evaporated.
If desired, add 1 cup of sugar to the juice and boil for 20 minutes.
Set and seal
Pour the jelly into glass pint jars.
Cover the jars with a glass and place them in the sunshine for several hours to thicken.
If sealing, cover the jars while the jelly is hot and then place them in the sunshine.
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.
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Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Currant juice
- Provides the main liquid and the tart fruit flavour that the jelly is built on.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and, when boiled with the juice, helps the jelly set and keep.
The step that matters
Boiling the juice down. The juice must reduce until enough water has evaporated and the sugar and fruit pectin are concentrated; boiling too briefly leaves a runny jelly that will not 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.
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