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Dessert

Black Currant Jam and Marmalade

A preserved spread made from black currants, black currant juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and currant work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Black Currant Jam and Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Wash and drain the black currants if they are dusty.

  2. Combine the black currants and black currant juice in a preserving pan.

  3. Add sugar equal to the weight of the currants.

Cook the jam

  1. Cook the mixture over medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

  2. Boil until the jam reaches the desired consistency, about 20‑30 minutes.

  3. To improve texture, remove half the currants, press them against the pan to extract juice, then return the liquid to the mixture.

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. Black currant + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant 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

Black currants
Provide the main fruit flavour and the pectin and acid that help the jam set.
Black currant juice
Adds extra fruit liquid and concentrated flavour, helping the mixture cook down into jam.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it set and keep by binding water and preserving the fruit.

The step that matters

Boiling until the desired consistency. Jam sets as pectin, acid and sugar concentrate while water evaporates. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull in flavour.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Red currantfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against black 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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