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Dessert

Currant, Cherry, and Raspberry Jam

Jam made from black currants, cherries, and raspberries with red currant juice and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and red currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 72 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Currant, Cherry, and Raspberry Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pick and stone the cherries.

  2. In a pan, combine the cherries with ½ cup red currant juice and boil for about 20 minutes.

Make the jam

  1. Add the black currants and raspberries along with the remaining red currant juice.

  2. Once the fruit breaks down, add 1 pound of sugar for every pint of fruit and juice.

  3. Boil until the jam reaches the desired consistency, skimming carefully.

  4. Test the jam to ensure it sets properly.

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 + red curranttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cherries
Provide sweet-tart flavor and body as they soften into the jam.
Black currants
Add tartness and natural pectin to help the jam set.
Raspberries
Contribute aroma and fruity flavor, breaking down to thicken the mixture.
Red currant juice
Adds liquid to start the cooking and brightens the jam with acidity.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it gel as it thickens.

The step that matters

Boiling until the jam reaches the desired consistency. Sugar, fruit acid and pectin set together only within a narrow range of cooking. Stopping too early leaves the jam runny, while boiling too long makes it stiff and can scorch the sugar. Testing the set guards against both.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Red currantthe original
  3. Blueberryfits less well
  4. Raspberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against black 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.

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