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Dessert

Red Currants with Oranges and Raisins

A boiled mixture of currants, raisins, oranges, and sugar served as a jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Red Currants with Oranges and Raisins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wash and stem the currants.

  2. Stone the raisins.

  3. Cut the oranges into small pieces.

Cook the compote

  1. Boil the currants for 20 minutes.

  2. Add the raisins and cook for a little longer.

  3. Add the sugar and bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in the oranges.

  5. Remove from heat and pour into jelly glasses.

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 + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 main fruit body and tart flavour that the compote is built around.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as it dissolves and thickens with the fruit, helps the compote set.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the fruit mixture.
Oranges
Add citrus acidity and aroma that brighten the sweet, rich fruit.

The step that matters

Add the sugar and bring to a boil. Sugar must be fully dissolved and the mixture brought to a full boil so the pectin in the currants can gel properly. Undercooking leaves a runny compote, while overcooking can make it stiff and sugary.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, raisin, orange):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, orange. 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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