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Green-Currant Jam

Jam made from green currants and loaf sugar, boiled and preserved in jars.

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 ↓

Green-Currant Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Gather the required quantity of green currants and remove the stalks.

  2. Place the currants in a preserving pan over a gentle fire to draw out the juice.

Make the jam

  1. Add ½ pound of crushed loaf sugar for every pound of fruit.

  2. Boil quickly for 20 to 25 minutes, stirring and skimming occasionally.

Jar and seal

  1. Turn the preserve into jars and let it cool.

  2. Cover with rounds of white paper soaked in brandy, then parchment, and tie down.

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

Green currants
Provide the fruit, tartness and pectin that set the jam once boiled with sugar.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps the jam thicken and keep well as it sets.

The step that matters

Boil quickly for 20 to 25 minutes, stirring and skimming occasionally. Fast boiling evaporates water and concentrates the pectin and sugar so the jam sets. Boiling too gently or too long can leave it runny or darken and scorch the sugar, so timing and stirring matter.

“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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