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
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the filling
Strip and cut off the stems from the black currants.
Stew the currants with the sugar until softened.
Assemble and bake
Transfer the mixture to a dish and cover with pastry.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the pastry is golden.
Serve
Serve warm.
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 main fruit body and tart flavour of the pie filling.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the currants and softens them as they stew, balancing their acidity.
- Pastry
- Forms the covering that traps steam and browns in the oven to a golden crust.
The step that matters
Stewing the currants with the sugar. Currants must be cooked until fully softened before baking, because the pastry bakes only briefly and would not cook the fruit through. Stewing also draws out juices that thicken the filling as it cools.
“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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