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Dessert

Black Currant Jam

Jam made from black currants and sugar, boiled for an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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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 Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather the currants when dry and remove them from the stalks.

  2. Bruise the currants in a bowl.

Make the jam

  1. Add 1½ pounds of sugar to every 2 pounds of fruit.

  2. Boil the mixture for 1 hour, stirring constantly.

Pot

  1. Transfer the jam into pots before adding the sugar.

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. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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 flavour, acidity and natural pectin that help the jam set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and preserves the fruit, and its concentration helps the jam set.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture for 1 hour, stirring constantly. Sugar and fruit must reach a high enough concentration through boiling for the pectin to set the jam. Constant stirring prevents the sugar from scorching on the bottom of the pan, which would add a burnt taste.

“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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