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Dessert

Black Currant Jam and Marmalade

A preserve made from black currants, juice, and sugar, boiled until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 Jam and Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the currants

  1. Wash and drain the black currants if dusty.

  2. Boil the currants for 15 to 20 minutes until soft.

  3. Remove half of the currants and press them against the side of the pan to extract juice.

Add sugar and finish

  1. Add sugar gradually to the extracted juice and stir until dissolved.

  2. Boil for an additional 10 minutes until thick.

  3. Pour into jars and let cool to firm up.

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
Provide the main fruit flavor, tartness and natural pectin that helps the jam set.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, as it boils down, helps it thicken and keep.
Black currant juice
Adds extra liquid and concentrated fruit flavor to the cooking base.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar fully before the final boil. Undissolved sugar can crystallize and leave a grainy texture, and the jam only thickens properly once it has boiled long enough to reach the setting point.

“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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