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Dessert

French Currant Jelly

A jelly made from white and red currants, currant juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 57 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

French Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Mix the white and red currants in a pot over gentle heat until they release their juice.

  2. Strain the mixture and weigh the juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Dip the sugar lumps in cold water until nearly dissolved, then boil to a thick syrup.

  2. Stir the syrup continuously until it falls in large, thick masses from the skimmer.

  3. Pour in the currant juice and boil quickly for 5 minutes after the sugar dissolves.

  4. Skim off any scum and pour the jelly into jars or warm glasses.

  5. Set the jars in a cool place to set.

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 + curranttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. White currant + curranttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. White currant + red curranttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  5. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

White currants
Provide the bulk of the juice and tart fruit flavour for the jelly.
Red currants
Add pectin and acidity to help the juice gel with the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set firm when boiled with the juice.

The step that matters

Stir the syrup until it falls in thick masses. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration before juice is added. Undercooked syrup leaves the jelly runny, while overcooking makes it stiff and grainy. Continuous stirring prevents scorching on the base of the pot.

Swap the white currant

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

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. White currantthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against red currant, 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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