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Red Currant Jelly

A preserved jelly made from ripe red currants and sugar, set with brandy papers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Red Currant Jelly

Why it works: Red currant and brandy work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 105 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Red Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the juice

  1. Strip the currants from the stalks and place them in a stone jar.

  2. Cover the jar with paper and place it in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Remove the jar and pour the currants into a sieve to drain without pressing.

Make the jelly

  1. For every pint of juice, add 14 ounces of sugar and stir gently over low heat.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim off any foam, and let it boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Pour the jelly into pots and cover with brandy papers.

Store

  1. Store in a cool, dry place.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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
Their natural pectin and acid help the juice set into a firm jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set by binding water and firming the gel.

The step that matters

Draining without pressing. Pressing the currants forces cloudy pulp and solids through the sieve, which makes the finished jelly cloudy and can add bitterness. Letting the juice drip alone keeps the jelly clear.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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