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Dessert

Gooseberry Jam for Tarts

A jam made from ripe red hairy gooseberries, currant juice, and sugar, boiled and simmered until jam consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

Gooseberry Jam for Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Place the gooseberries in a preserving pan with the currant juice.

  2. Boil quickly and mash with a spoon until they begin to break.

Make the jam

  1. Add the sugar and simmer slowly until it reaches a jam consistency.

  2. Boil for a long time to ensure it keeps.

  3. Stir to prevent burning.

  4. If syrup and fruit separate, boil longer.

Check the set

  1. Check after 2-3 days.

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 + 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

Gooseberries
Provide the main fruit body, pectin, and tartness that give the jam its flavour and structure.
Currant juice
Adds extra pectin and acidity to help the jam gel and balance sweetness.
Pure white sugar
Sweetens the jam and, at high concentration, helps preserve it and set the gel.

The step that matters

Stirring while the jam cooks. Sugar-rich fruit mixtures scorch easily on the base of a pan when heated for a long time, so constant stirring prevents burning and off flavours.

“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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