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 Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Pour 1 quart of boiling water over 1 peck of currants on the stems.
Scald or gently boil until the currants are thoroughly wilted.
Mash the currants and strain through a coarse muslin bag.
Boil the juice for about 5 minutes and skim thoroughly.
Make the jelly
Heat the sugar and stir it into the juice, then bring to a boil.
Remove the scum and pour the jelly into glasses.
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 the juice and natural pectin that let the jelly set.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the jelly and helps it set firm when boiled with the juice.
The step that matters
Skim thoroughly after boiling the juice. Scum rising from the juice would cloud the finished jelly and can spoil its clear appearance, so it must be removed before the sugar is added.
“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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