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Cherries Preserved with Currant Juice

Preserved cherries combined with currant juice and sugar, boiled and jarred.

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 ↓

Cherries Preserved with Currant Juice

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the juice

  1. Place the currants in a preserving kettle over medium heat.

  2. Once boiling, crush the currants and strain through cheesecloth, pressing out all the juice.

  3. Stem and stone the cherries, saving all the juice.

Cook and jar

  1. Combine the cherries, currant juice, and sugar in the preserving kettle.

  2. Heat to boiling and skim off any foam, then boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Pour into sterilized jars or tumblers.

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

Cherries
Provide the main fruit body and flavor of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps it set as it cooks down.
Currants
Supply tart juice that adds acidity and deepens the fruit flavor.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam while boiling. Foam formed on the surface holds impurities and air bubbles that can cloud the preserve and affect its texture. Removing it as it rises keeps the final product clear and clean-tasting.

“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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