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Dessert

Strawberry and Currant

A cooked fruit mixture of strawberries and red currants sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Strawberry and Currant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wash and hull the strawberries.

  2. Remove stems from the red currants.

Cook the compote

  1. Combine strawberries and currants in a pot.

  2. Add sugar according to the amount of fruit used.

  3. Cook over medium heat until the mixture thickens, stirring frequently.

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

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit body, sweetness, and flavor that forms the compote.
Red currants
Add tart acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw moisture out of the fruit to form the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat until the mixture thickens. Heating the fruit softens it and releases its natural pectin and juices. Stirring frequently prevents the sugars from scorching on the bottom of the pot and lets the mixture thicken evenly.

“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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