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Dessert

Fine Currant Syrup, or Strop De Groseilles

A syrup made by extracting juice from ripe red currants, adding sugar, and boiling until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Fine Currant Syrup, or Strop De Groseilles

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Express the juice from the currants and strain it into a clean pitcher.

  2. Let the juice stand in a cool place for 24 hours or longer until curdled.

  3. Pour the juice through a fine sieve.

  4. Pass the juice through a jelly bag without pressure.

Make the syrup

  1. Add sugar equal to the weight of the juice and dissolve it.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a preserving pan.

  3. Boil gently for 4-5 minutes, skimming off any scum.

  4. After 12 hours, pour the syrup into small dry bottles.

  5. Cork the bottles.

  6. Store the bottles in a cool, dry place.

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. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the tart juice that forms the base and flavour of the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and, when dissolved and boiled, thickens it into a syrup that keeps well.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 4-5 minutes, skimming off any scum. Boiling too hard or too long can darken the syrup and dull its fresh currant flavour. Skimming removes foam and impurities that would otherwise cloud the syrup and spoil it during storage.

“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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