Why it works: Black currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
To Make Black Currant Jam
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Pick the black currants off the stalks when fully ripe.
Cook the jam
Combine the currants with the sugar in a pot.
Boil the mixture for half an hour.
Jar and store
Pour the hot jam into jars.
Cover the jars with paper to seal them.
Store in a dry place.
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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Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together393 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Black currants
- Provide the fruit base, flavor, acidity and natural pectin that helps the jam set.
- Raw sugar
- Sweetens the jam, thickens it as it cooks, and helps preserve it by binding water.
The step that matters
Boil the mixture for half an hour. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sugar and fruit pectin. If the jam is undercooked it may stay runny and not set, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull in flavor.
“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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