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Currant, Raspberry, Etc. Jelly

A fruit jelly made from currants or raspberries, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Currant, Raspberry, Etc. Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Gather the fruit on a dry day and place it in a jar, covering it tightly.

  2. Set the jar in a saucepan filled with cold water and simmer for about 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the pan from the heat and pour the contents of the jar into a jelly bag, passing the juice through a second time without squeezing the bag.

Make and set the jelly

  1. For each pint of juice, add 1½ pounds of pounded sugar and stir until dissolved.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a preserving pan, boil gently for about 20 minutes while stirring and skimming until clear.

  3. Pour the jelly while warm into pots and cover with paper wetted in brandy once cooled.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Currants or raspberries
Provide the fruit juice that forms the base and flavour of the jelly.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps the jelly set as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Boiling until clear. Boiling gently while stirring and skimming removes foam and keeps the jelly clear. Boiling too hard can scorch the sugar or break the set, so the pan needs close attention.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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