Why it works: Black currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Black-Currant Jam
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the currants
Ensure currants are dry and pick the finest ones, discarding small or unripe ones.
Bruise the currants in a bowl and place them in a pan with water.
Cook the jam
Boil for 20 minutes, then add sugar.
Boil for an additional 30 minutes until thickened.
Pour into jars and seal.
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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Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together393 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Black currants
- Provide the main fruit flavour, natural pectin, and tartness that balances the sugar.
- Moist sugar
- Sweetens the jam and helps it thicken and set as it cooks down.
The step that matters
Boiling the sugar stage. Adding sugar after the initial boil and cooking until the jam thickens matters because sugar and heat together help pectin gel. Undercooking leaves a runny jam, while overcooking can make it stiff or sticky.
“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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