Skip to main content
Dessert

Currant Jelly

Currant jelly made from red and white currants and sugar, boiled and set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: White currant and currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pick over currants, wash, and drain without removing stems.

  2. Mash currants in a preserving kettle until they look white.

  3. Strain the mash through a coarse strainer, then through double cheesecloth or a jelly bag.

  4. Measure the juice.

Cook the jelly

  1. Bring the juice to a boil and boil for five minutes.

  2. Add an equal measure of heated sugar. Boil for three minutes.

  3. Skim the mixture.

  4. Pour the jelly into glasses.

Set and store

  1. Place the glasses in a sunny window for twenty-four hours.

  2. Cover the glasses and store in a cool, dry place.

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. White currant + curranttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  3. White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together59 recipes

Sugar and currant 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

Red and white currants
Provide the fruit juice that gives the jelly its flavor and natural pectin for setting.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the juice thicken into a jelly as it boils.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice with sugar. Currant jelly sets through pectin and sugar concentration. Boiling the juice before adding sugar and then boiling the mixture for the stated time helps the jelly reach the right concentration to set. Too little boiling can leave it runny.

Swap the white currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Red currantfits better
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, currant. 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.

More currant jelly recipes

Red 93Black 55Sauce 50White 38French 11Tartlets 7 See all 365 →

You might also like

Currant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesCurrant and Raspberry IceCurrant and Raspberry Ice7 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes