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Currants for Tarts, to Preserve

A preserved currant mixture for use in tarts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and currant 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

Make the syrup

  1. In a preserving pan, combine 1 pound of sugar with enough currant juice to dissolve it.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and skim off any foam.

Cook and store

  1. Add 1¼ pounds of currants and boil until they are very clear.

  2. Transfer the currants to a jar and cover with brandy paper.

  3. Store 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. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant 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

Sugar
Dissolves in the juice to form a syrup that preserves the currants and sets their sweetness.
Currants
The fruit being preserved; boiling in the syrup turns them clear and tender.
Currant juice
Dissolves the sugar and provides the liquid in which the currants cook.

The step that matters

Boiling the currants until very clear. Boiling in the sugar syrup lets the sugar penetrate the fruit and replace its water. Stopping too early leaves the fruit under-preserved, while over-boiling can break the currants down.

“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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