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Red Currant Jelly

A jelly made from red currants and sugar, served with brandy-dipped paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Red Currant Jelly

Why it works: Red currant and brandy work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 105 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Red Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Gather currants on a dry day and pick them.

  2. Place currants in a preserving pan over the fire to extract the juice.

  3. Strain the juice through a jelly bag.

Make the jelly

  1. For every pint of juice, add 1 pound of loaf sugar in large pieces.

  2. Boil gently for 30 minutes, removing any scum that rises.

Seal the jars

  1. Once cooled, cut white paper to fit your jars and dip it in brandy before placing it on top.

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 + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Red currants
Provide the fruit juice that gives the jelly its flavour, tartness and natural pectin for setting.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the juice and, with boiling, helps the mixture thicken into a set jelly.
Brandy
Dipped paper is placed on the jelly as a light covering; it is not part of the jelly itself.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 30 minutes. Gentle boiling concentrates the juice and sugar until the pectin and acid can set the jelly. Removing scum keeps the jelly clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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.

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