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 ↓
Preserving and Bottling
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Gently stir currants over a clear fire until the juice flows freely.
Squeeze the currants and strain the juice through a folded muslin or jelly bag.
Make the jelly
Pour the juice into a preserving pan and add 1 pound of sugar for every pint of juice.
Boil the mixture, skimming off any scum until it ceases to rise.
Pour the hot jelly into pots immediately.
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.
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Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 and natural pectin that help the jelly set.
- White sugar
- Sweetens the jelly and helps it set firm as it cooks.
The step that matters
Boil until the scum stops rising. Skimming scum keeps the jelly clear and clean-tasting. Boiling must continue until the foam settles, since the jelly sets as water evaporates and sugar concentrates.
“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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