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Dessert

Currant Jam, Red

A jam made by boiling currants with sugar, then cooling and sealing in paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Currant Jam, Red

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather currants on a fine day and strip them from the stalks.

  2. Place the currants in a preserving pan with sugar in a 1:1 ratio.

Cook

  1. Stir and boil for about 30 minutes, removing scum as it rises.

  2. Pour the jam into pots and let it cool.

Seal and store

  1. Cover with oiled paper and then with tissue paper brushed with egg white.

  2. Press the paper around the pot's top and let it dry to form a hard, air‑tight seal.

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

Currants
Provide the fruit, pectin and tartness that give the jam its flavour and set.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps preserve it by binding water and inhibiting microbial growth.

The step that matters

Removing scum as it rises. Scum is foam and impurities that rise during boiling. Skimming it keeps the jam clear and clean-tasting, and reduces spoilage risk in the finished jars.

“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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