Skip to main content
Dessert

Currant Jam

Currant jam made by cooking ripe currants with sugar until boiled, then cooled and sealed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stem and weigh the currants.

  2. In a porcelain-lined kettle, combine currants and sugar.

Cook the jam

  1. Heat over moderate fire, stirring occasionally until the sugar melts.

  2. Move to a hotter part of the fire and stir until the jam begins to boil.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes from the first boil.

Jar and seal

  1. Pour into tumblers or jars and let cool.

  2. Seal the jars as you would jelly.

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

Currants
Provide the fruit flavour and natural pectin that help the jam set.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it thicken and keep well.

The step that matters

Boil for 10 minutes from the first boil. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugar and fruit pectin so the jam sets. Timing from the first boil keeps the cook consistent, since too short a boil leaves it runny and too long can make it stiff or caramelised.

“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.

More currant jam recipes

Black 54Red 28White 17Raspberry 5Spiced 5Green 4 See all 57 →

You might also like

Red Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesCurrant and Raspberry IceCurrant and Raspberry Ice7 recipes