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 ↓
Good Red or White Raspberry Jam
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the fruit
Boil the raspberries and currant juice quickly for 20 minutes.
Add the sugar
Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the powdered sugar until dissolved.
Finish cooking
Return the pan to the heat and boil for an additional 10 minutes.
Skim off any foam and stir the mixture continuously.
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.
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Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Raspberries
- Provides the main fruit flavor and most of the jam's body.
- Currant juice
- Adds natural pectin to help the jam set, plus tartness that balances the sweetness.
- Powdered sugar
- Sweetens the jam and, with the fruit's pectin, helps it set as it cooks.
The step that matters
Stir in the sugar off the heat until fully dissolved. Sugar left undissolved can settle and scorch on the pan bottom or leave grainy crystals. Dissolving it fully before reboiling gives an even mixture, and the timed boil is what lets the pectin and sugar set the jam.
“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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