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Black Currant Paste

A thick paste made by baking currants and mixing with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Black Currant Paste

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Bake the currants

  1. Place currants in an earthen jar or pan.

  2. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for six hours.

Make the paste

  1. Pulp the baked currants through a fine sieve.

  2. Transfer the pulp to a preserving pan and stir over low heat until very thick.

  3. Add powdered lump sugar to taste and stir for a few minutes.

Dry

  1. Spread the mixture on tin plates to dry.

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
Provide the fruit base, with natural pectin and acids that help the paste thicken and set.
Powdered lump sugar
Adds sweetness and body, and helps the paste keep by reducing available water.

The step that matters

Thickening over low heat. Stirring over low heat until very thick concentrates the pulp by driving off water. Too little reduction leaves a paste that will not set or keep; too much heat can scorch the sugars and 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.

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