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Dessert

To Dry Currants

Currants are dried by layering with sugar, boiling, and sun or oven drying.

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 ↓

To Dry Currants

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure. The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Layer 1 pound of currants and ½ pound of sugar in a crock and let sit overnight.

Cook and dry

  1. Heat the mixture, skim off any foam, and boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Spread the mixture on plates to dry in the sun or in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

Store

  1. Store the dried currants in covered containers or paper sacks.

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 that is concentrated and dried into the finished product.
Sugar
Draws moisture out of the currants and adds sweetness, helping preserve them.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture and skim the foam. Boiling the sugared fruit thickens the syrup and drives off water so the currants can dry. Skimming removes foam, which keeps the syrup clear and prevents off flavors.

“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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