Skip to main content
Dessert

Cranberry, Grape, and Currant Jelly

A jelly made from cranberries, grapes, or currants, sweetened with sugar and thickened with egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cranberry, Grape, and Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wash and drain the fruit until nearly dry.

  2. Place the fruit in an earthen jar and set it in a kettle of hot water to boil, ensuring no water enters the jar.

  3. Once the fruit breaks, pour it into a flannel bag and let it drain into a deep dish without squeezing.

Make the syrup

  1. For each pint of juice, add 1 ½ cups of white sugar.

  2. For each quart of syrup, add the beaten egg white.

  3. Boil the syrup gently, skimming off any scum that rises.

  4. Boil for 15 to 20 minutes, then test by dropping a bit into cold water; if it sinks, it's done.

Seal and set

  1. Pour into tumblers and seal with white paper smeared with egg white, then place in the sun to set.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Grape + sugartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,490 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Grape + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fresh cranberries, grapes, or currants
Provide the fruit flavor and natural pectin that help the juice set into jelly.
White sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps it thicken and set as it boils down.
Egg white
Gives the syrup a clarifying effect, lifting scum so the jelly looks clear.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup gently and test for doneness. Gentle boiling keeps the syrup from scorching and clouding, while the cold-water test shows whether enough water has evaporated for the sugar and pectin to gel.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Grapethe original

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

You might also like

Grape SherbetGrape Sherbet32 recipesGrapefruit MarmaladeGrapefruit Marmalade16 recipesGrape ButterGrape Butter9 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes