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Black Currant Jam and Marsialade

A jam made from black currants, black currant juice, and sugar, boiled and thickened.

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 Marsialade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and drain the black currants if dusty.

  2. In a preserving pan, combine the black currants and black currant juice.

Cook the jam

  1. Boil gently for 15 to 20 minutes.

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

  3. Gradually stir in the sugar off the heat until dissolved.

  4. Boil for a few more minutes until thickened.

  5. Allow to cool; it will firm up as it cools.

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 flavour, pectin and body that give the jam its structure.
Black currant juice
Adds extra liquid and concentrated fruit flavour, helping the currants break down while cooking.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, as it concentrates, helps it set and keeps it preserved.

The step that matters

Stirring in the sugar off the heat. Sugar added gradually and fully dissolved before boiling prevents grainy crystals in the jam. Boiling only after it dissolves lets the sugar and pectin set properly.

“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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