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Dessert

Currant Bar-le-duc

A preserve of large currants made with sugar and currant juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

Currant Bar-le-duc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the currants

  1. Stem the currants without breaking them.

  2. Bruise ordinary currants while warm to extract 1 pint of juice.

Make the syrup

  1. In a porcelain preserving kettle, combine ½ cup of currant juice and 3 pounds of sugar.

  2. Bring the mixture slowly to a boil.

  3. Skim the mixture carefully.

  4. After boiling for 5 minutes, add 1 pound of large currants.

  5. Simmer the mixture for 4 minutes.

  6. Remove the currants without breaking them.

  7. Boil the syrup down for 5 minutes or longer until thick.

  8. Skim the syrup well.

  9. Strain the syrup through a hot cloth over the fruit.

  10. Transfer the mixture into small jelly glasses.

Seal and store

  1. Cover the glasses with hot paraffin.

  2. Seal the glasses with paper.

  3. Store the preserve in a dark place.

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. 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

Currants
Provide the fruit flavour and tartness that form the body of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it concentrates, helps it set into a thick texture.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup down until thick. Sugar and fruit acid only set into a firm preserve when enough water has evaporated and the sugar concentration is high. Stopping too early leaves a runny result, while overcooking can make it stiff or sticky.

“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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