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Dessert

Black Currant Jelly

A jelly made from black and red currants with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and red currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 72 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Black Currant Jelly

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 juices

  1. Place the black currants in a glazed earthenware pan without removing them from the stalks.

  2. Cover the pan with a cloth.

  3. Bake in the oven at 400°F (200°C) until soft.

  4. Rub the softened black currants through a cane sieve to extract the juice.

  5. Heat the red currants until nearly boiling.

  6. Strain the red currant juice as done with the black currants.

  7. Mix equal quantities of black and red currant juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Add 1 pound of sugar for each pint of the juice mixture.

  2. Boil the mixture in a preserving pan for 15 minutes.

  3. Test the jelly by placing a drop on a cold plate.

  4. If it sets in about a minute, the jelly is ready.

  5. Pour the jelly into pots and glasses.

  6. Cover once 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 + red curranttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. 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

Ripe black currants
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and natural pectin for setting the jelly.
Ripe red currants
Add tartness and extra pectin to help the jelly set.
Good loaf sugar
Sweetens the juice and, with boiling, helps the mixture thicken and set.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice and sugar. Boiling must be long enough to concentrate the mixture to the point where it gels on cooling. Undercooked jelly stays runny, while overcooking can darken the flavour and dull the fruit taste. Testing on a cold plate shows when it is ready.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (black currant, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Red currantthe original
  3. Blueberryfits less well
  4. Raspberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against black currant, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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