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
Prepare the juice
Tie the currants in a jar and place them in a kettle of water over low heat for 2 hours.
Strain the liquid through a fine sieve without squeezing the currants.
Make the jelly
For every pint of juice, add ½ lb of pounded loaf sugar.
Heat the mixture over very low heat until the sugar dissolves without stirring.
Once the scum rises thickly, 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
- Red and white currants
- Provide the pectin and acidity that let the juice set into a firm jelly.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the juice and helps it set by binding water and firming the gel.
The step that matters
Heating the sugar without stirring. Stirring can crystallise the sugar and cloud the jelly, and heating gently lets the sugar dissolve fully before the mixture boils. Boiling only after the scum rises helps the jelly set clear.
“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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