Why it works: White currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. The science ↓
Currant Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Extract the juice
Tie the currants in a jar.
Place the jar in a kettle of water over low heat for 2 hours or in a slow oven.
Strain the liquid through a fine sieve without squeezing the currants.
Make the jelly
For every pint of juice, add ¾ lb loaf sugar and heat over very low heat until the sugar dissolves.
Remove the scum that rises.
Boil quickly for 20 minutes or until it jellies.
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.
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White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together59 recipes
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Currants
- Supplies juice with natural pectin and acidity that help the jelly set.
- Loaf sugar
- Adds sweetness and, once dissolved and boiled, helps the juice set firmly.
The step that matters
Boil briskly until it jellies. Sugar must dissolve fully first, or crystals can form. Boiling evaporates water so pectin and sugar concentrate enough to set; too little boiling leaves it runny.
“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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