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Preserve

Currant and Orange

A preserve of currants, sugar, orange juice, raisins and chopped oranges, boiled and canned in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Currant and Orange

Ingredients

Directions

Layer the fruit

  1. Layer currants, sugar, orange juice, raisins, and chopped oranges alternately in a pot.

Boil and can

  1. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

  2. Can the mixture in sterilized jars.

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 + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Orange + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 tartness and natural pectin that helps the preserve thicken and set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, thickens the mixture and helps preserve it.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and citrus aroma, and helps pectin set.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a chewy texture.
Oranges
Add bitter citrus aroma and texture from the chopped fruit and peel.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 20 minutes. Boiling concentrates the sugar and fruit and lets the pectin and acid work together to thicken. Too little cooking can leave the preserve runny and more prone to spoiling.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, orange, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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