Skip to main content
Dessert

Currants, Iced

Currants dipped in beaten egg whites, water, and rolled in sugar, then dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Currants, Iced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the coating

  1. Select fine bunches of red or white currants.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Mix the egg whites with the water.

Coat and dry

  1. Dip each bunch of currants into the mixture.

  2. Let them drain for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Roll the drained currants in very fine pounded sugar.

  4. Lay them to dry on paper until the sugar crystallizes.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. 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

Whites of eggs
Whipped whites form a thin, sticky film that holds the sugar to the currants.
Pounded sugar
Fine sugar dries into a crisp, sparkling crust that adds sweetness and a frosted look.
Currants
Fresh fruit provides the tart flavour and the core that the frosted coating surrounds.

The step that matters

Drain before rolling in sugar. If the currants stay wet, the sugar dissolves into the liquid instead of forming a dry crust. Draining for the stated time leaves only a thin film of egg white to hold the crystals.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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.

You might also like

Red Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesCurrant and Raspberry IceCurrant and Raspberry Ice7 recipes