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Strawberry Jelly

A sweet preserve made from strawberries and currants or rhubarb boiled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. If using rhubarb, cut it into small pieces.

  2. Place strawberries and currants or rhubarb in a jar in a saucepan of boiling water.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes until juice is released.

  4. Strain and press the mixture through flannel, repeating if necessary for clarity.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the juice with ¾ pound of loaf sugar for every pint for about 30 minutes, stirring and skimming.

  2. Test for jelliness by placing a little on a cold plate.

  3. Pour into jars and cover once cold.

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 + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 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

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and most of the juice for the jelly.
Red currants or pink rhubarb
Add tartness and natural pectin to help the juice set.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps it set into a firm jelly when boiled.

The step that matters

Test for jelliness on a cold plate. Jelly sets only when enough sugar and pectin are concentrated by boiling. Cooling a small sample shows whether it wrinkles when pushed, so the cook knows to continue boiling or stop before it becomes too stiff.

“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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