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Superlative Red Currant Jelly

A jelly made from ripe red currants and powdered sugar, boiled and strained.

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 ↓

Superlative Red Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Strip the currants from the stems carefully.

  2. Mix the currants with an equal weight of powdered sugar.

Cook

  1. Boil the mixture quickly for exactly 8 minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Skim off the abundant scum as it rises.

Strain and store

  1. Pour the mixture through a clean sieve into small jars to collect the jelly.

  2. Store the jars in a cool, dry place until completely cold.

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

Ripe currants
Provide the fruit pectin and acidity that let the juice set into a gel.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, when boiled, concentrates the juice so it can set.

The step that matters

Boil quickly for exactly 8 minutes. Boiling concentrates the sugar and pectin until the mixture reaches the point where it sets. Boiling too briefly can leave the jelly runny, while boiling too long can over-thicken it and dull its flavour and colour.

“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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