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Red Currant Jelly

A preserve made from ripe red currants and cane sugar, boiled into a thick jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Red Currant Jelly

Why it works: Red currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Red Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Place the red currants in a preserving pan and heat them until they release their juice.

  2. Pour off the juice.

  3. Weigh the juice.

Make the syrup

  1. For each quart of juice, use 1 lb of sugar.

  2. Dip the sugar pieces in cold water.

  3. Boil the sugar in a pan until they form a thick syrup.

  4. Stir the syrup until it drapes from the skimmer in thick folds.

Set the jelly

  1. Pour the juice into the syrup.

  2. Stir the mixture well.

  3. Boil sharply for five minutes.

  4. Skim off any foam.

  5. Pour the jelly into scalded and dried glasses.

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 + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the natural juice and tartness that form the base of the jelly.
Cane loaf sugar
Sweetens the juice and, when boiled with it, helps the jelly set.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup to the thick-fold stage. Sugar must be boiled until the syrup drapes from the skimmer in thick folds. Too little cooking leaves the syrup thin, so the juice will not set properly into jelly.

“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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