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To Preserve Currants with the Stems on

A method for preserving currants by coating them in melted brown sugar and drying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

To Preserve Currants with the Stems on

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick currants with the stems on.

  2. Melt brown sugar in a kettle over low heat.

Candy and dry

  1. Immerse currants in the melted sugar, as many as you can at a time.

  2. Remove currants with a skimmer and spread them on a board to dry in the sun.

  3. Place them in an oven for a short time to prevent them from getting wormy.

Store

  1. Put dried currants in a bag and hang in a dry, cool 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. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant 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

Brown sugar
Melted sugar coats the currants, sweetening them and forming a preserving glaze as it dries.
Currants
The fruit being preserved; it takes on the sugar coating and dries into a sweet, chewy preserve.

The step that matters

Drying the sugared currants. Sugar-coated fruit can stay sticky or spoil if moisture remains, so the currants must dry thoroughly in sun and then gentle oven heat before storage.

“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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