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Dessert

Currant Conserve

A preserve made from currants, sugar, raisins, and orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Currant Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stone and chop the raisins.

  2. Combine the currants, sugar, chopped raisins, and juice of the oranges in a pot.

  3. Optionally, add the grated rind of the oranges for extra flavor.

Cook and jar

  1. Cook over medium heat for 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. For jellied currants, wash and drain the currants, then weigh equal amounts of sugar and fruit.

  3. Boil the fruit for 10 minutes, then add the sugar and boil for another 10 minutes, starting the timer when boiling begins.

  4. Pour into jars while hot.

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 + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 main fruit body and tart flavor, and their pectin helps the conserve set.
Sugar
Sweetens the conserve and helps preserve it while thickening the fruit.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and body to the fruit mixture.
Oranges
Contribute acidity and aroma from the juice and rind.

The step that matters

Boiling the fruit before adding the sugar. Boiling the fruit first softens it and releases pectin and juice; adding sugar too early can toughen the skins and slow the set, so the timed boil must be watched closely.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, orange. 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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