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Dessert

Red Currant Jam

Jam made from red currants and preserving sugar, cooked until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Red Currant Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stalks from the red currants.

  2. Place the currants in a preserving pan.

  3. Add ½ lb of preserving sugar for each lb of fruit.

Cook the jam

  1. Stir occasionally until the mixture is nearly boiling.

  2. Stir almost continuously.

  3. Boil gently for about 40 minutes, or until a small amount sets when poured onto a cold plate.

Pot and store

  1. Pour the jam into pots.

  2. Cover the pots closely.

  3. Store in a cool, dry place.

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 + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the fruit flavour, tartness, and natural pectin that helps the jam set.
Preserving sugar
Sweetens the jam, helps it gel with the fruit's pectin, and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Testing for a set. Boiling too briefly leaves the jam runny because the pectin and sugar have not formed a gel, while boiling too long can make it stiff and dull. The cold plate test shows when the set is right.

“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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