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Dessert

French Currant Jelly

A jelly made from red and white currants and sugar, boiled and set in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and white currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

French Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Mix the red and white currants in a pot and heat gently until they release their juice.

  2. Strain the juice and weigh it.

Make the jelly

  1. For every 4 pounds of juice, break 3 pounds of sugar into large lumps and dip them in cold water.

  2. Boil the sugar until it forms a thick syrup, stirring constantly until it falls in large masses from the skimmer.

  3. Pour the currant juice into the syrup and boil quickly for 5 minutes, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

  4. Skim off any scum and pour the jelly into jars or warm glasses.

  5. Set the jars in a cool place to set.

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. Red currant + white curranttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together59 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the main fruit flavour and the natural pectin and acid that help the juice gel.
White currants
Add tart fruit flavour and juice that contributes to the jelly's set.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, boiled with the juice, helps it set firm and keep well.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice with the sugar. The jelly must be boiled quickly and only briefly so it reaches the gel point without overcooking. Prolonged boiling can darken the colour and dull the flavour, while too little boiling may leave the jelly runny.

Swap the white currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red currant, sugar):

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red currant, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

More currant jelly recipes

Red 93Black 55Sauce 50White 38French 11Tartlets 7 See all 365 →

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