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Dessert

Currant Syrup

A syrup made by mashing currants, extracting juice, and reducing it with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Currant Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Mash the currants in a granite bowl with a wooden masher.

  2. Cover the bowl and let it stand for three hours.

  3. Strain the mixture through a woolen bag.

  4. Measure the juice and pour it into a granite boiler.

Make the syrup

  1. Add 1 cup of sugar for each cup of juice.

  2. Boil until reduced to a clear syrup, skimming as needed.

  3. Remove from heat and let it cool.

Bottle and store

  1. Pour into small bottles and add a little oil on top to preserve.

  2. Store the bottles upright in a dry cupboard.

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. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the main fruit flavor and tartness that the syrup is built on.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and, once concentrated by boiling, helps the syrup keep.

The step that matters

Boil until reduced to a clear syrup. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sugar, which helps the syrup keep. Stopping too early leaves it more dilute and less stable, while boiling too long makes it thicken too much as it cools.

“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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