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Dessert

Best Black Currant Jam

Jam made from black currants, their juice, and sugar, simmered and sieved until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Best Black Currant Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pulp

  1. Stew the currants in their own juice until tender.

  2. Rub the stewed currants through a sieve.

  3. Boil the pulp for 10 minutes.

Set the jam

  1. Gradually stir in the powdered sugar off the heat until dissolved.

  2. Boil for a few more minutes until the preserve thickens.

  3. Let it cool; it will become firm.

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. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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 pulp, flavour, and natural pectin for the jam's body.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, as it boils down, helps it thicken and keep its set.

The step that matters

Boiling the pulp and sugar until thickened. Sugar must dissolve fully off the heat before the final boil, or it can crystallise. The jam needs enough boiling to concentrate and reach a set; under-boiling leaves it runny, while the cooling step firms it further.

“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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