Why it works: Sugar and crab work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 407 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells grass, green. The science ↓
Jams and Jellies
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Pick fruit when just ripened and remove stems.
Place fruit in a porcelain-lined kettle or a bright brass/tin kettle.
Crush a little fruit and add all to the kettle without water.
Heat the mixture and mash with a potato masher.
Strain the juice through a jelly bag, letting it run off before squeezing.
Cook and store
For every pint of juice, add 1 pound of sugar.
Boil the juice for 25 minutes, then add sugar and boil for 5 more minutes.
Pour into glasses to store.
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.
-
Sugar + crabtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together407 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).
-
Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,256 recipes
-
Currant + crabtop 28% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together50 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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
- Fruit
- Provides the flavour, colour and natural pectin that help the jam set.
- Granulated sugar
- Sweetens the jam and helps it set by binding water and thickening the juice.
The step that matters
Boiling the juice before adding sugar. Boiling the juice first concentrates it and lets natural pectin work; the sugar is added afterward so it can dissolve and the mixture can reach the right set. Boiling too briefly or too long can leave the jelly runny or cause it to turn dark and lose flavour.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, crab):
- Raisinfits better
- Lemonfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, crab. 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.
You might also like
Red Currant Jelly65 recipes
Currant Ice Cream32 recipes
Currant Sherbet9 recipes
Currant and Raspberry Ice7 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.