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Gooseberry and Currant Jam

A jam made from gooseberries and currant juice sweetened with preserving sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

Gooseberry and Currant Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stems and tails from the gooseberries.

  2. Place the gooseberries in a preserving pan and let them sit by the fire to extract some juice.

Cook the jam

  1. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for about 10 minutes.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and then the currant juice.

  3. Boil until the jam sets when tested on a cold plate, stirring well towards the end.

  4. Remove any scum that rises during boiling.

Jar

  1. Pour the jam into jars, cover tightly, and store.

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. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant 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

Red hairy gooseberries
Provide the bulk of the fruit, along with natural pectin and acidity that help the jam set.
Preserving sugar
Sweetens the jam and, at high concentration, helps it set and preserves it.
Currant juice
Adds extra pectin and tart acidity to support setting and flavour.

The step that matters

Boil until the jam sets. Jam sets when pectin, acid and sugar reach the right concentration. Undercooking leaves it runny and it may spoil, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull. Testing on a cold plate shows whether it has set.

“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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