Why it works: White currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. The science ↓
Jelly of Ripe Gooseberries
Ingredients
Directions
Extract the juice
Place the gooseberries in a pot over a clear fire and stir gently until they yield all their juice.
Pour off the juice without pressing the fruit, then strain it through a fine sieve and a jelly bag.
Make the jelly
Weigh the juice and add 1 lb of white currant juice for every 3 lbs of gooseberry juice.
Boil the mixture quickly for 15 minutes.
Remove from heat and stir in half the weight of sugar until dissolved.
Boil the jelly for an additional 6 minutes, skimming thoroughly.
Pour the jelly into jars or molds.
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.
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White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together59 recipes
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Gooseberries
- Main fruit whose juice gives the jelly its body and tart flavor.
- White currant juice
- Adds acidity and natural pectin to help the jelly set.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the jelly and, with pectin and acid, helps it set firm.
The step that matters
Boil the jelly for the final 6 minutes. After the sugar dissolves, this boil concentrates the mixture so the pectin and acid can form a gel when cooled. Too short a boil leaves the jelly runny, and skimming removes foam that would cloud it.
“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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