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Dessert

Black Currant Jam

Jam made from black currants and sugar, cooked until set.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Place black currants in an earthen jar or preserving pan.

  2. Put them in a slow oven (300°F / 150°C) until soft.

  3. Rub the softened currants through a cane sieve to separate the stalks.

Cook the jam

  1. Add an equal weight of broken loaf sugar to the currants in the preserving pan.

  2. Boil the mixture over a brisk fire for about 15 minutes.

  3. Test for doneness by dropping a little on a cold plate; it should set in about a minute.

Pot

  1. Once done, pour the jam into pots and cover when cool.

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, pectin and tartness that form the jam's body and flavour.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the jam and, as it concentrates during boiling, helps it set and keep.

The step that matters

Testing for doneness on a cold plate. Jam sets as boiling concentrates the sugar and pectin. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff and dull. A cold-plate test shows whether the set has formed.

“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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