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Dessert

Currant Jelly

Currant jelly made by boiling currants, straining juice, dissolving sugar, and pouring into containers.

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 Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pick currants into a stone jar.

  2. Set the jar in a boiler of hot water and boil until the fruit is cooked and the juice is drawn.

  3. Strain the juice through a flannel bag into a stew-pan.

  4. Skim the juice until it is clear.

Make the jelly

  1. Pound the sugar fine and heat it.

  2. Stir the sugar into the clear juice until dissolved.

  3. Pour the syrup into pots and glasses.

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 juice that, with pectin, sets into the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps it thicken and set as it cools.

The step that matters

Skimming the juice until clear. Skimming removes foam and loose pulp that would cloud the jelly and can spoil its texture. Clear juice gives a smooth, bright set.

“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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