Why it works: Black currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Black Currant Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Remove the stalks from the black currants.
Place the currants in a jar in a saucepan of boiling water and simmer until the juice is extracted.
Strain the juice into a preserving pan.
Make the jelly
For each pint of juice, add ½ pound of sugar and boil gently until the jelly stiffens, testing a little on a cold plate.
Pot and store
Pour the jelly into small pots and cover with paper brushed with egg white, securing it to exclude air.
Store in a cool, dry place.
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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Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together393 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Black currants
- Provide the fruit juice that becomes the jelly, along with natural pectin and tartness.
- Preserving sugar
- Sweetens the juice and, with boiling, helps the jelly set firm.
The step that matters
Boiling until the jelly stiffens. Boiling concentrates the juice and sugar until enough pectin and acid are present for a gel to form. Too little boiling leaves a runny jelly, while overboiling can make it dark and stiff. Testing on a cold plate shows whether it has reached the set point.
“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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