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Dessert

Currant Conserve

A sweet preserve made from currant juice, sugar, raisins, orange and lemon juice and peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Currant Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jam

  1. Combine currant juice, sugar, raisins, orange juice, orange peel, lemon juice, and lemon peel in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture slowly for 40 minutes.

Fill and serve

  1. Pour the conserve into jelly tumblers while hot.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Currant juice
Provides the main liquid and tart fruit flavour that forms the body of the jam.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, as it thickens during boiling, helps it set and preserves it.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the finished conserve.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and citrus aroma that brighten the sweet currant flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances sweetness and supports setting.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture slowly for 40 minutes. Sugar and fruit must be cooked long enough for the liquid to reduce and thicken as sugar concentrates. Too little cooking leaves the conserve runny, while over-boiling can scorch the sugar and darken the flavour.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, orange, lemon. 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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