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Dessert

Black Currant Lozenges

A sweet confection made from powdered sugar, black currant paste, Turkey gum, and tartaric acid, rolled and cut into lozenges.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and black currant 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 ↓

Black Currant Lozenges

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the powdered sugar, black currant paste, Turkey gum, and tartaric acid until well combined.

  2. Roll the mixture on a surface dusted with coarse powdered sugar before cutting it into lozenges.

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. Sugar + black curranttop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

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

  2. Black currant + turkeytop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Sugar + turkeytop 38% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together134 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Powdered sugar
Provides the bulk and sweetness that form the body of the lozenge.
Black currant paste
Supplies the main flavour and moisture, binding the mixture into a workable dough.
Turkey gum
Acts as a thickening and gelling agent, giving the lozenges a firm, chewy texture.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness and brightens the black currant flavour.

The step that matters

Mixing until well combined. Turkey gum and tartaric acid must be evenly distributed through the paste; uneven mixing leaves pockets of gum that cause soft or gritty spots and uneven sourness in the finished lozenges.

Swap the black currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Black currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, turkey. 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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