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Dessert

Red-currant Jelly

A preserve made by extracting juice from red currants and sweetening with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Red-currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Gather red currants in fine weather and remove them from the stalks.

  2. Place the currants in a jar and put the jar in a saucepan of boiling water.

  3. Simmer gently until the juice is extracted from the currants.

  4. Strain the juice through a fine cloth jelly bag without squeezing too much.

  5. Measure the juice and add ¾ pound of loaf sugar for each pint.

Make the jelly

  1. Put the mixture in a preserving pan over the fire and stir continuously.

  2. Remove any scum that rises with a wooden or silver spoon.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes to half an hour, testing for firmness on a plate.

  4. Once done, remove from heat and pour into small jars.

Seal and store

  1. Cover each jar with greased paper and tissue paper brushed with egg white.

  2. Label the jars with the date and store in a dry place.

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 + 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

Red currants
Provide the juice and natural pectin and acidity that set the jelly.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps the jelly set firm when boiled.

The step that matters

Boil for 20 minutes to half an hour, testing for firmness on a plate.. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugar and pectin so the juice gels on cooling. Underboiling leaves a runny jelly, while overboiling can make it stiff and dull. Testing a cold plate shows when the set is right.

“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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