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 ↓
Currant Jklly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Pick over currants and wash them clean.
Place the currants in a clean sack and squeeze to extract the juice.
Measure the juice and bring it to a boil in a pot.
Make the jelly
Measure an equal amount of sugar and heat it in a pot.
Once the juice is boiling, add the heated sugar and boil for twenty minutes.
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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Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Currants
- Provide natural pectin and acid, which help the juice gel as it cooks.
- Sugar
- Helps the jelly set, adds sweetness, and preserves the set jelly.
The step that matters
Boiling the juice with the sugar for twenty minutes. Boiling concentrates the sugar and pectin until the mixture reaches the point where it sets into a gel. Boiling too briefly can leave the jelly runny, while overcooking can make it stiff or cloudy.
“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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