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Dessert

Currant Soy

A sweet and tangy currant sauce made with currants, brown sugar, vinegar, black pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Currant Soy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine all ingredients in a large pot.

  2. Cook over low heat for 3 hours, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooked, let cool before using.

  2. Serve as a delicious accompaniment for meats.

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 + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  5. Currant + peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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 main fruit flavor and tartness, and break down into the sauce's body as they cook.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth, and helps the mixture thicken as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet fruit and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Keep the heat low and stir regularly. Sugar-rich mixtures scorch easily on the bottom of the pot. Scorched sugar turns bitter and can ruin the whole batch, so low heat and occasional stirring matter over the long cook.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, pepper. 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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