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Wild Rasp and Red Currant Jelly

A jelly made from wild raspberries, red currants, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Wild Rasp and Red Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Clean the fruit and place it in a preserving pan with 2 quarts of water.

  2. Boil over medium heat for one hour, stirring and bruising the fruit constantly.

  3. Turn the mixture into a jelly bag and let it strain overnight.

Make the jelly

  1. The next day, pour the fruit juice back into the pan and boil briskly for half an hour to evaporate the water.

  2. Add 7 lbs of lump sugar and boil quickly for 2 minutes, or more slowly for half an hour.

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 + 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
Their natural pectin and acidity help the juice set into a firm jelly.
Wild raspberries
They supply the main flavour and colour, and their juice gives the jelly body.
Lump sugar
Sugar binds water and helps the pectin gel, while also sweetening the jelly and preserving it.

The step that matters

Boiling down after adding the sugar. Sugar must dissolve fully and the jelly must reach a rolling boil so the pectin and acid can set it. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny, while boiling too long can darken the colour and dull the flavour.

“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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