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Dessert

Red-currant Jelly

A jelly made from red and white currants, water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and white currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Red-currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Combine red and white currants in a large copper pan.

  2. Add water and bruise the fruit with a pestle.

  3. Remove any stalks as you go.

  4. Heat the mixture until it begins to boil.

  5. Press the mixture through a jelly bag to extract the juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Weigh the juice and add ¾ pound of sugar for each pound of juice.

  2. Stir until the sugar is fully dissolved, then bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat to prevent boiling over.

  4. Check for doneness by seeing if the jelly hangs on the edge of a skimmer.

Jar and seal

  1. Pour the jelly into sterilized jars and let it sit for two days.

  2. Cover jars with rounds of white paper dipped in brandy and seal with another layer of paper.

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. Red currant + white curranttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

  3. White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together59 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the main fruit flavor and natural pectin and acid that help the jelly set.
White currants
Add tartness and fruit flavor while contributing pectin and acidity for setting.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and, at high concentration, helps the jelly set and keeps it preserved.

The step that matters

Checking for doneness. Jelly must reach a high enough sugar and pectin concentration to gel. Undercooked jelly stays runny, while overcooking can make it stiff or cause sugar to crystallize. The skimmer test shows when it sheets off rather than dripping.

Swap the white currant

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

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red currant, sugar. 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.

More currant jelly recipes

Red 93Black 55Sauce 50White 38French 11Tartlets 7 See all 365 →

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