Name: Black Currant Jelly
Ingredients: 2 pounds Kentish cherries; 1½ pounds raspberries; 1½ pounds red currants; 1½ pounds white currants; 3¼ pounds common sugar

Why it works: Red currant and white currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Black Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the stones from the cherries.
Boil the cherries for 20 minutes.
Add the raspberries, red currants, and white currants, and boil for another 20 minutes.
Stir in the sugar and boil for 15 more minutes, stirring continuously to prevent burning.

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.

Red currant + white curranttop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,156 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together59 recipes