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Currant Marmalade

A sweet preserve made by boiling currants with sugar.

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 ↓

Currant Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 240°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the currants

  1. Strip the currants from the bunches.

  2. Soak the currants in boiling water until they break.

  3. Remove the currants from the heat.

  4. Drain them on a sieve.

  5. Let them cool.

  6. Pass the currants through the sieve to remove the seeds.

  7. Dry the currants over low heat until ready.

Make the marmalade

  1. Bring the sugar to a boil until it reaches the fifth degree (about 240°F or 115°C).

  2. Mix the currants and sugar well.

  3. Simmer for a while.

  4. Pour the marmalade into pots.

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 flavour and natural pectin that helps the marmalade set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and preserves the fruit while helping the mixture thicken into a gel.

The step that matters

Bringing the sugar to the fifth degree. The sugar must reach the stated temperature so the mixture sets. Too little heat leaves the marmalade runny, while too much makes it hard or caramelised.

“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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