Skip to main content
Preserve

Red, White, and Black Currant Jellies

A jelly made by boiling strained red, white, or black currant juice with sugar until it sets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

Red, White, and Black Currant Jellies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pick currants from their stalks.

  2. Place the currants in a saucepan over medium heat.

  3. Mash the currants completely without boiling.

  4. Strain the juice through a flannel bag.

Make the jelly

  1. For every pint of juice, add nearly 1 pound of sifted sugar.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Skim the mixture clean.

  4. Boil until the mixture reaches a jelly-like consistency.

  5. To test, place a small amount in a cold china cup; if it sets, it is ready.

Pot and store

  1. Pour the jelly into pots or glasses.

  2. Let it cool for at least 24 hours.

  3. Sift powdered sugar over the top.

  4. Cover with brandy-dipped paper and seal.

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. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Currants
Provide the juice that gives the jelly its flavour and natural pectin for setting.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, with boiling, helps it reach a firm set.

The step that matters

Boil until jelly-like, then test on a cold cup. Boiling concentrates the juice and sugar until pectin can gel on cooling. Undercooking leaves it runny, while overcooking makes it stiff, so the cold-plate test shows whether it has set.

“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.

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes