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Currant Pickles

Pickled currants sweetened with sugar and preserved in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the currants

  1. Scald the currants in a pot.

  2. Remove the currants to a jar.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Boil the remaining mixture for a few moments.

  2. Pour the boiled mixture over the currants in the jar.

  3. If not sweet enough, use only 1 pint of vinegar.

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. Currant + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. 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
Supply the main fruit flavor and tartness of the pickle.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the remaining mixture for a few moments. A brief boil dissolves the sugar fully and heats the vinegar syrup, so it is hot enough to pour over the fruit and begin preserving it.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (currant, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Red currantfits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

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