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Dessert

Black Currant Jam

Jam made from black currants, water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Black Currant Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove stems and blossoms from the currants.

  2. Wash the currants and measure them into a kettle.

  3. Add an equal quantity of water.

Cook the jam

  1. Cook until the currants are tender, then weigh them.

  2. Add 1 lb of sugar for every 1 lb of fruit and juice.

  3. Cook for 10 minutes longer.

Bottle

  1. Pour into sterile bottles and seal.

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. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Black currants
Provide the main flavor, natural acidity and pectin that helps the jam set.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, with cooking, helps it thicken and keep well.

The step that matters

Weigh the fruit and juice before adding sugar. The sugar amount is set by the weight of the cooked fruit and juice, one pound of sugar per pound. Sugar helps the jam set and preserves it, so guessing the amount can leave the jam runny or poorly preserved.

“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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