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Currant Jelly

Currant jelly made by extracting juice from currants, clarifying, and sweetening with sugar.

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 ↓

Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Pick and wash the currants.

  2. Place them in a kettle with a little water.

  3. Cook over moderate heat until the juice is extracted.

  4. Pour the mixture through a sieve and press gently with a wooden spoon.

  5. Weigh the juice and return it to the kettle.

Make the jelly

  1. Bring the juice to a boil and remove any scum.

  2. Add an equal weight of sugar to the juice.

  3. Skim quickly to minimize boiling.

  4. Strain again through the sieve and pour into small jars or tumblers immediately.

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 natural pectin and acidity that let the juice set into a firm jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps the juice gel as it cools.

The step that matters

Skim quickly to minimize boiling. Boiling the juice for too long after adding sugar can break down pectin and reduce gelling strength, and it also darkens the colour and dulls the flavour. Brief, rapid skimming keeps the jelly clear and set.

“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 →

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