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Dessert

Black Currant Jam

A jam made by boiling black currants with sugar until it sets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Black Currant Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Weigh the black currants after removing the stalks.

  2. Place the currants and sugar in a preserving pan.

Cook

  1. Boil for 45 minutes, pressing the fruit with a wooden spoon to extract the juice.

  2. Check if the jam sets by placing a small spoonful on a cold plate.

  3. If it doesn't set, simmer a little longer.

  4. Remove all scum and stir constantly to prevent burning.

Jar and store

  1. Once done, pour the jam into jars and let it cool completely.

  2. Cover jars with air-proof paper tied down or gummed.

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 fruit, flavour and natural pectin that the jam is built on.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it set and keep well once cooked.

The step that matters

Testing for set. Setting depends on sugar, pectin and enough boiling to reach the gel point. Testing a spoonful on a cold plate shows whether it wrinkles when pushed. Stopping too early leaves runny jam, while cooking too long can make it stiff or scorch.

“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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