Skip to main content
Dessert

Cherry and Currant Jelly

A fruit jelly made from cherries and currants boiled with water and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cherry and Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Clean the cherries and currants.

  2. Add a little water and place the fruit over low heat.

  3. Boil until soft, then pour into a jelly bag and let it drip overnight.

  4. Measure out 1 pound of sugar for every pint of juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Place the juice over low, steady heat to boil.

  2. Heat the sugar in shallow baking pans without allowing it to color.

  3. Add the sugar to the juice and stir until dissolved.

  4. Allow to boil for a few minutes, then remove from heat and fill sterilized 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 + 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

Cherries
Provide the main fruit flavour, natural pectin and acidity that help the jelly set.
Currants
Add pectin and tart acidity that support setting and a bright flavour.
Sugar
Sets the jelly by binding water and, with pectin and acid, forms a firm gel.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar and boiling. Sugar must dissolve fully before a boil, or it can crystallize in the jelly. Boiling long enough after adding it lets pectin and acid set the gel. Undercooking leaves a runny jelly; overcooking can darken and dull the flavour.

“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 JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesCurrant and Raspberry IceCurrant and Raspberry Ice7 recipes