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Red Currant Jelly

A jelly made from red and white currants sweetened with coarsely powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Red Currant Jelly

Why it works: Red currant and white currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Red Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Strip the red currants from their stalks and mix with the white currants.

  2. Place the currants in a clean preserving pan and stir gently over medium heat until the juice flows freely.

  3. Pour the mixture into a fine hair sieve and let it drain without pressure.

  4. Pass the juice through a folded muslin or jelly bag.

  5. Weigh the juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the juice rapidly for 15 minutes.

  2. For each pound of juice, add 8 ounces of coarsely powdered sugar.

  3. Stir off the heat until the sugar is dissolved.

  4. Boil the jelly for an additional 8 minutes.

  5. Skim off any scum that rises.

Jar and cool

  1. Pour the jelly into jars and let it cool.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + white curranttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  3. White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together59 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the main fruit flavour and the natural pectin and acidity that help the jelly set.
White currants
Add extra juice and pectin while contributing a milder, sweeter fruit flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, when boiled, helps it thicken and set firmly.

The step that matters

Boil the juice rapidly for 15 minutes. Boiling concentrates the juice by driving off water and activates the pectin, so the jelly can set. Too little boiling leaves it runny, while adding sugar before the juice is concentrated can slow setting.

Swap the white currant

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

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red currant, sugar. 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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