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Canned Currants

A preserved currant product made by boiling currants with sugar.

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 ↓

Canned Currants

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Place 2 quarts of currants in a preserving kettle and heat slowly.

  2. Crush the currants with a wooden vegetable masher.

  3. Press and squeeze the juice through a piece of cheesecloth.

Make the syrup

  1. Return the juice to the fire, add sugar, and stir until dissolved.

  2. When the syrup begins to boil, add the remaining currants.

  3. Heat slowly, then boil for 10 minutes.

Fill the jars

  1. Skim off any foam and fill sterile jars to overflowing.

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 juice and tart fruit flavor that the preserve is built on.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar fully before boiling. Sugar must dissolve completely in the hot juice. Undissolved grains can later crystallize, leaving the preserve gritty, and stirring until clear helps the syrup set evenly.

“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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