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Red Currant Jelly

A jelly made from red currants and loaf sugar, boiled and cooled, then covered with brandy-dipped paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Red Currant Jelly

Why it works: Red currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Red Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Gather currants on a dry day and pick them.

  2. Place currants in a preserving pan over heat to extract the juice.

  3. Strain the juice through a jelly bag.

Make the jelly

  1. For every pint of juice, add 1 pound of loaf sugar in large pieces.

  2. Boil gently for 30 minutes, removing any scum that rises.

Seal and store

  1. Once cooled, cover with white paper dipped in brandy, cut to fit your jars.

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 + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the juice, whose natural pectin and acid let the jelly set and give it a tart flavour.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the juice and, with boiling, helps the mixture thicken into a firm, spreadable set.

The step that matters

Boiling gently for 30 minutes. Sugar and pectin only set into a jelly once enough water has evaporated and the mixture reaches the right concentration. Boiling too hard or too briefly can leave the jelly runny or cause it to scorch, so keep the boil gentle and watch for setting.

“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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