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Dessert

Currant Blahoicamqb

A jelly set with isinglass, made from currant juice, sugar and cold cream, then poured into a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Currant Blahoicamqb

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Dissolve isinglass in the currant juice over heat.

  2. Add sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Slowly mix in the cold cream until less than milk-warm.

Set

  1. Pour into a mold and let set.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  3. Currant + creamtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,829 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

Isinglass
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the jelly a smooth body.
Cold cream
Adds fat for richness and a creamy, soft texture.
Currant juice
Forms the liquid base, giving the jelly its tart flavour and colour.

The step that matters

Adding the cream slowly and below milk-warm. Cooling the mixture before the cream goes in and stirring slowly helps keep the cream from splitting or curdling. Isinglass begins to set as it cools, so rushing the mixture can leave lumps or a grainy texture.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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