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Another Way to Make Red Currant Jelly

A sweet preserve made from red currants and raspberries, sweetened with sugar and set into jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Another Way to Make Red Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Rinse the currants in cold water, then gently remove the currants from the water.

  2. Place the currants in a sieve and let them drain on a tablecloth for 30 minutes.

Extract the juice

  1. Combine the currants, raspberries, and enough water to prevent burning in a preserving pan.

  2. Heat the mixture until hot but do not let it boil, shaking the pan occasionally.

  3. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag.

Make the jelly

  1. For every pint of juice, add 1 pound of granulated sugar.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and boil for 1 minute.

  3. Remove the scum from the surface after taking the pan off the heat.

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. 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

Red currants
Their natural pectin and acidity help the juice set into a firm jelly.
Raspberries
Add flavour and aroma to the juice alongside the currants.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps it set by binding water and pectin.

The step that matters

Boil for 1 minute after the sugar is added. Boiling the sugar and juice briefly lets the pectin and acid reach the setting point. Boiling too long can darken the flavour and cause the jelly to become stiff, while too short a boil may leave it runny.

“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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