Name: White or Red Currant Jam
Ingredients: equal quantity of white or red currants; equal quantity of finely-pounded loaf sugar

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 ↓

White or Red Currant Jam

Ingredients

equal quantity of white or red currants
equal quantity of finely-pounded loaf sugar

Directions

Prepare

Pick the fruit carefully.
Layer the currants and sugar alternately in a preserving pan.

Cook

Boil for 10 minutes.
Alternatively, boil in clarified sugar for the same time.

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.

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

Currants: Provide the fruit, acidity and pectin that give the jam its flavour and set.
Sugar: Sweetens the jam and helps it thicken and keep by drawing out water from the fruit.

“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.