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Dessert

Black Currant Jelly

A sweet preserve made from black currants, water, and sugar.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Pick and wash the currants.

  2. Put the currants in a pan with the water and heat gradually to boiling, stirring frequently.

  3. Boil gently for 10 minutes.

  4. Pour the mixture into a jelly bag to drain until all the juice is extracted.

Make the jelly

  1. For each pint of juice, add 1 lb of sugar and an additional ½ lb.

  2. Boil again for 10 minutes, then skim off any foam.

  3. Pour the jelly into small pots.

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 flavour, acidity, and natural pectin that helps the jelly set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, helps the jelly set, and preserves it.

The step that matters

Boil again after adding the sugar. The sugar, acid and pectin must be boiled together long enough to reach the gel point. Undercooking leaves the jelly runny, while the foam must be skimmed so the finished jelly is clear.

“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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