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Red Currant Jelly

A clear jelly made from red currants, sugar, lemon juice, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Red Currant Jelly

Why it works: Red currant and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Red Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the currants

  1. In a saucepan, heat ½ cup of smooth, clarified sugar until it boils.

  2. Add 1 quart of picked red currants and boil for 30 minutes, stirring well.

  3. Occasionally add cold water to remove scum.

Strain and set

  1. Strain the mixture through a sieve into a bowl containing the juice of 3 lemons.

  2. Add isinglass and pour the jelly into a mold.

  3. Chill the mold in ice until 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.

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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Red currants
Provide the fruit flavour and natural pectin that helps the jelly set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, once concentrated by boiling, helps the jelly firm up.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and supports pectin setting.
Isinglass
Acts as a gelling agent that gives the jelly its firm, sliceable structure.

The step that matters

Boil the currants for 30 minutes while stirring. Boiling concentrates the sugar and fruit pectin so the jelly can set firmly. Stirring keeps the fruit from sticking and scorching on the base of the pan, which would give a burnt taste.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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