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Black Currant Jelly

A sweet jelly made from black currants and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Black Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pick the black currants and place them in a clean brass pan without water.

  2. Heat the pan on the fire, stirring until the currants release their juice.

  3. Remove from heat and strain the juice through a fine sieve and a clean cloth.

Make the jelly

  1. Measure the juice and for every pint, add 1 pound of sugar, breaking it into small pieces.

  2. Clean the brass pan, add the sugar, and pour the juice over it.

  3. Heat the mixture, stirring until the sugar dissolves, then stop stirring.

  4. Allow it to come to a boil, skimming off the scum quickly for no more than 1.5 minutes.

  5. Remove from heat and pour into jars; it will set by the next morning.

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 + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Black currants
Their natural pectin and acidity give the juice the body and tang that let it set into jelly.
Single refined sugar
Sweetens the juice and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps the jelly set firm.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum quickly during the boil. Keeping the boil brief limits extra evaporation and cooking time, which helps the jelly keep its bright colour and fresh flavour. Lingering over the boil can dull the flavour and weaken the set.

“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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