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Another Way to Make Red Currant Jelly

A sweet jelly made from red currants, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Another Way to Make Red Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Remove the currants from the stalks and place them in a saucepan.

  2. Sprinkle the sugar over the currants and add the cold water.

  3. Heat the mixture over the fire for about 30 minutes until heated through.

  4. Strain the mixture through a sieve to extract the juice.

Sweeten and set

  1. For every pint of juice, add 1 pound of sugar and let it dissolve before heating.

  2. Stir the mixture until it boils, then let it boil rapidly for 10 minutes.

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

Currants
Supply the juice, natural pectin and acid that allow the jelly to set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, helps the juice reach a firm set, and preserves the jelly.

The step that matters

Boil rapidly for 10 minutes. The jelly sets only when the sugar and juice are concentrated by a hot, rapid boil that drives off water and lets pectin and acid form a gel. A weak or short boil leaves the jelly runny, while overcooking can darken its colour and flavour.

“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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