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Dessert

French Currant Jelly

A jelly made from red and white currants, currant juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 57 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

French Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Mix the red and white currants in a pot over gentle heat until they release their juice.

  2. Strain the juice and weigh it.

Make the jelly

  1. Break the sugar into large lumps and dip them in cold water.

  2. Boil the sugar until it forms a thick syrup, stirring constantly until it falls in large white masses from the skimmer.

  3. Pour in the currant juice immediately and boil quickly for 5 minutes after the sugar dissolves.

  4. Skim off any scum and pour the jelly into jars or warm glasses.

  5. Set the jars in a cool place to set.

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 + curranttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. White currant + curranttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Red currant + white curranttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar 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 currants
Provide the main fruit flavour and the natural pectin and acid that help the jelly set.
White currants
Add tart fruit flavour and extra acidity to the juice that helps the jelly set.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, boiled into syrup, helps it thicken and set as it cools.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar to the right stage before adding the juice. Sugar must reach a thick syrup that falls in large masses from the skimmer. Undercooked syrup leaves the jelly runny, while stirring keeps the sugar from crystallising or burning on the pot base.

Swap the white currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red currant, currant, sugar):

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. White currantthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against red currant, 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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