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Dessert

Black Currant Jam

Jam made from black currants and sugar, preserved with brandy paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and brandy work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 55 recipes. Both carry ethyl butyrate, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Black Currant Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the currants

  1. Gather currants on a dry day when fully ripe.

  2. Pick them from the stalks and wash them well.

Cook the jam

  1. In a preserving pan, combine currants and sugar.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes, skimming and stirring constantly.

  3. Pour into pots and let cool.

Seal the pots

  1. Cover with brandy paper and tie with white paper.

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. Black currant + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Black currants
Provide the fruit, pectin and tart flavour that give the jam its body and taste.
Double refined sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it set and keep by drawing out moisture.

The step that matters

Boil for 30 minutes, skimming and stirring constantly. Constant stirring prevents the sugar and fruit from scorching on the bottom of the pan, while skimming removes foam that would cloud the jam. Boiling long enough lets the mixture thicken so it sets properly as it cools.

Swap the black currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Black currantthe original

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

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