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To Preserve Currants

A method of preserving currants by cooking them in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

To Preserve Currants

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and make the syrup

  1. Pick out the seeds from the currants.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the sugar and water, and heat until the sugar melts.

Cook the currants

  1. Add the currants to the syrup and cook them gently.

  2. Skim off any foam that forms on the surface.

  3. Once the currants are clear, remove them from the syrup.

  4. Boil the syrup until it thickens, then return the currants to the syrup.

Store

  1. When cooled, transfer the mixture to glass jars for storage.

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 the fruit flavor and the body of the preserve.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, at high concentration, helps preserve the fruit by binding water.

The step that matters

Cook the currants gently. High heat can split the skins and toughen the fruit, while a gentle simmer lets sugar penetrate slowly so the currants stay whole and clear.

“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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