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Dessert

Black Currant Jelly

A sweet jelly made from black currant juice and sugar, optionally flavored with red currant juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and red currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 72 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Black Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the black currant juice as directed for red currant jelly.

  2. Combine the juice and sugar in a pan.

Cook and jar

  1. Stir the mixture and bring it to a boil.

  2. Skim off any foam that forms on the surface.

  3. Pour into sterilized jars and seal.

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. Black currant + red curranttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + red curranttop 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

Black currant juice
Provides the main flavour, plus the natural pectin and acid that help the jelly set.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set into a firm gel when boiled with the juice.
Red currant juice
Adds extra tartness and currant flavour.

The step that matters

Bringing the mixture to a boil. The juice, sugar and natural pectin must reach a full boil long enough to set. Boiling too briefly leaves the jelly runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff and dull in flavour.

Swap the red currant

The recipe marks red currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (black currant, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Red currantthe original
  3. Blueberryfits less well
  4. Raspberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against black currant, sugar. 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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