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Preserve

To Preserve Ripe Currants

A method for preserving ripe red currants in sugar by simmering and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

To Preserve Ripe Currants

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick the red currants and place them in a pot.

  2. Add the moist sugar and let them simmer gently for 20 minutes.

Bottle and store

  1. Once cooled, transfer the currants into wide-necked bottles.

  2. Tie two bladders on each bottle separately.

  3. Store the bottles in a cool, dry place.

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
Provide the fruit that forms the body and tartness of the preserve.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps it thicken as it simmers down into a preserve.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 20 minutes. Simmering gently lets the sugar dissolve and the fruit soften and thicken without scorching on the bottom of the pot. Boiling hard can burn the sugar and make the preserve taste bitter.

“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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