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Dessert

Spiced Currants or Cherries

A preserved fruit dish of currants or cherries simmered with spices, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Currants or Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and heat the fruit

  1. Heat the fruit. If using cherries, pit and chop them finely.

  2. Place the fruit in a large copper kettle with a little water.

  3. When partially heated, clamp the cover and set the kettle in the copper with a mildly heated disc underneath.

  4. Let it remain for about 2 hours.

Add the spices and finish

  1. Remove from the copper and add the spices, sugar, and vinegar.

  2. Bring to a boil in the uncovered kettle.

  3. Clamp the cover and set in the copper without a heated disc for 2 hours.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Currants or cherries
Provide the fruit base, whose natural juices and pectin help form the thick, spreadable texture.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and, with the long cooking, thickens the fruit into a preserve.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the fruit flavour.
Cinnamon, cloves, allspice and nutmeg
Supply warm aromatic flavour that defines the spiced character of the preserve.

The step that matters

Holding the kettle at low heat for the long rest. Fruit and sugar can scorch or stick if the heat is too high, and a rushed or uneven heat leaves the preserve thin. A gentle, steady heat lets the sugar and fruit concentrate and thicken slowly without burning.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, clove, allspice, nutmeg, vinegar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, clove, allspice, nutmeg, vinegar. 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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