Skip to main content
Dessert

To Preserve Black Currants

A preserved black currant preserve made with black currants, red currant juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

To Preserve Black Currants

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather the currants on a dry day.

  2. Clip off the heads and stalks with scissors.

Cook the fruit

  1. In a preserving pan, combine the currants, red currant juice, and sugar.

  2. Shake frequently until it boils.

  3. Carefully remove the fruit from the sides of the pan.

  4. Skim off the scum as it rises.

  5. Boil for 10 to 15 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. 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

Black currants
Provides the main fruit flavour and body, with natural pectin that helps the preserve set.
Red currant juice
Adds extra fruit flavour and acidity, which brightens the sweetness and supports setting.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens and preserves the fruit by drawing out water, and helps the preserve thicken and set.

The step that matters

Carefully remove the fruit from the sides of the pan. Fruit left stuck to the hot sides can scorch as the mixture thickens, and the burnt bits can spread a bitter, smoky taste through the whole batch.

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.

You might also like

Red Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesCurrant and Raspberry IceCurrant and Raspberry Ice7 recipes