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Black-currant Jelly

A preserve made from currants, water, sugar, and sealed with brandy paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Black-currant Jelly

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Strip off the stalks from the currants and place them in an earthen pan.

  2. Add water and cover with paper. Set in a cool oven for 2 hours.

  3. Squeeze the mixture through a fine cloth into a preserving pan.

Make the jelly

  1. Add sugar and stir gently until it melts.

  2. Bring to a boil, skimming well, and boil quickly for 30 minutes.

  3. Pour into pots and seal with brandy paper.

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 + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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 bulk of the juice, along with the natural pectin and acidity that help the jelly set.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the juice and, through boiling, helps the jelly thicken and set firmly.
Water
Helps extract juice from the currants during the gentle cooking stage.

The step that matters

Boil quickly for 30 minutes after skimming. A rapid boil concentrates the juice and sugar so the jelly reaches its setting point. Skimming removes foam and impurities that would cloud the jelly or spoil its texture.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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