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Currant Conserve

A sweet preserve made from oranges, currants, raisins, sugar, and optional citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Juice the oranges and grate the peel of one orange.

  2. In a large pot, combine the orange juice, grated peel, currants, sugar, and raisins.

  3. If desired, add chopped citron before cooking.

Cook and seal

  1. Bring the mixture to a boil slowly.

  2. Cook for 10 minutes, then seal in 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. Orange + curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Orange and sugar 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 the bulk of the fruit and the tart flavour that the preserve is built on.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens it as it cooks, helping it set.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy body to the preserve.
Oranges
Contribute acidity and aromatic citrus flavour from the juice and peel.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil slowly. Heating gently lets the sugar dissolve fully before the mixture boils, so the sugar does not crystallise or scorch on the bottom of the pot. Slow heating also helps the fruit release its juice evenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, 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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