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Dessert

Currant Jelly

A clear currant jelly made by boiling currants, adding sugar, and setting in tumblers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Wash the currants in a stone jar.

  2. Squeeze the currants through a flannel bag without squeezing to obtain a clear liquid.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the liquid briskly in a porcelain-lined kettle for 20 minutes.

  2. Stir in heated sugar and skim off any foam.

  3. Boil for 2 minutes longer.

  4. Warm your tumblers and fill them with the hot liquid.

Set the jelly

  1. Let the tumblers stand for 24 hours to set.

  2. If not set, cover with window glass and let stand in the sun for several days.

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 + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Currants
Provide natural pectin and acid, which together allow the juice to gel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, helps the jelly set firmly, and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Boil for 2 minutes longer after adding the sugar. Sugar must dissolve fully and the mixture must reach a hot, concentrated state so the pectin and acid can form a gel as it cools. Too little boiling can leave the jelly runny.

“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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