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Dessert

Red-currant Jelly

A sweet preserve made from red and white currants, sugar, and water, set into jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and white currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Red-currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Combine red and white currants in a large pot with water.

  2. Bruise the currants with your hands and remove any stalks.

  3. Heat the mixture until it begins to boil, then press the fruit to extract the juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Weigh the juice and add ¾ pound of sugar for each pound of juice.

  2. Stir until the sugar is dissolved, then bring to a boil.

  3. Skim off any foam, reduce heat to prevent boiling over.

  4. When the jelly drapes from a skimmer, remove from heat.

Set and seal

  1. Pour into jars and let set for two days.

  2. Cover jars with rounds of white paper dipped in brandy and seal with another layer of paper or bladder.

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 + white curranttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

  3. White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together59 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the main fruit flavour and natural pectin that helps the jelly set.
White currants
Add extra pectin and a milder, brighter flavour to the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and, when boiled, helps the jelly thicken and set.

The step that matters

Judging when the jelly is done. Boiling too long or too briefly changes the set. The jelly is ready when it drapes in a sheet from a skimmer, showing enough sugar and pectin have concentrated to gel as it cools.

Swap the white currant

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

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red 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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