Why it works: Black currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Black Currant Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Stew and mash the black currants thoroughly.
Strain the mixture through a jelly bag.
Make the jelly
Add 2 cups of sugar to the strained juice.
Boil the mixture together until it thickens.
Cool and store in jars.
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.
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Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together393 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Black currants
- Supply the juice, plus natural pectin and acid that help the jelly set.
- Granulated sugar
- Sweetens the juice and, with boiling, helps the pectin gel and preserves the jelly.
The step that matters
Boil the mixture until it thickens. Pectin, acid and sugar only form a firm gel when the mixture reaches a sufficiently high concentration. Stopping too early leaves a runny jelly, while boiling too long can make it stiff or grainy as sugar concentration climbs.
“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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