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Berry or Currant Jam

Jam made from berries or currants boiled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and sugar 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 ↓

Berry or Currant Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fruit

  1. Put the berries or currants into a preserving kettle.

  2. Boil for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring often and skimming off any scum.

Add sugar and finish

  1. Add sugar in the proportion of ½ pound sugar to 1 pound fruit.

  2. Boil for an additional 30 minutes, stirring continually.

  3. When done, pour into small jars or jelly glasses.

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. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar 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

Berries or currants
Supply the fruit flavor, natural pectin and acidity that help the jam set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, thickens the mixture and helps preserve the jam.

The step that matters

Boiling with the sugar added. Once the sugar goes in, the mixture must boil continually and be stirred. Sugar, fruit pectin and acid together let the jam gel, while stirring keeps it from scorching on the bottom of the kettle.

“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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