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Red Currant Jelly

A sweet preserve made from red and white currants and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Red Currant Jelly

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 ↓

Red Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Strip the currants from their stalks and place them in a clean preserving pan.

  2. Stir gently over a clear fire until the juice flows freely.

  3. Drain the juice through a fine sieve without pressure.

  4. Pass the juice through a folded muslin or jelly bag and weigh it.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the juice rapidly for 15 minutes.

  2. For each pound of juice, add 8 oz of powdered sugar and stir off the heat until dissolved.

  3. Boil the jelly for an additional 8 minutes, skimming off any scum that rises.

  4. Pour the jelly into jars and let it cool.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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, tartness, and natural pectin for the jelly to set.
White currants
Add juice and mild flavour while keeping the jelly's colour lighter.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps the jelly reach a firm, set texture.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice rapidly before adding sugar. Rapid boiling concentrates the juice and drives off water so the pectin and acid can set the jelly once sugar is added. Insufficient boiling leaves the jelly runny and unable to set.

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.

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