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Currants for Tarts, to Preserve

A preserve made by boiling currants with sugar and currant juice, then storing in a jar.

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 ↓

Currants for Tarts, to Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the preserve

  1. Combine the currants and enough currant juice in a preserving pan to dissolve the sugar.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Skim off any foam.

  4. Add the sugar.

  5. Boil until the currants are clear.

Jar and store

  1. Transfer the preserve to a jar.

  2. Cover the jar with brandy paper.

  3. Store the jar in a 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. 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 base, along with their natural pectin and tart flavour, for the body of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, helps preserve it by binding water and thickening the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil until the currants are clear. Sugar must concentrate the syrup enough to stop spoilage and let the preserve set. Stopping too early leaves it runny and prone to fermenting, while overboiling makes it dark, sticky and candied.

“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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