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Dessert

Red-currant Jelly

A preserve made by extracting juice from red currants and sweetening it with loaf 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 on a fine weather day and remove them from the stalks.

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

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

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

  5. Measure the juice. Add 2 ¼ cups of loaf sugar for every 4 cups of juice.

Make the jelly

  1. In a preserving pan, combine the juice and sugar.

  2. Stir the mixture over heat.

  3. Remove any scum that rises using a wooden or silver spoon.

  4. Boil for 20 to 30 minutes.

  5. Test for firmness by placing a little jelly on a plate to cool.

  6. Once firm, remove from heat and pour into small jars.

Seal the jars

  1. Cover each jar with oiled paper. Then cover with tissue 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 + 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 that sets into the jelly, along with their natural pectin and tartness.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps the jelly set firm and hold its shape.

The step that matters

Testing for firmness. Boiling must reach the point where the juice sets when cool. Undercooked jelly stays runny, while overcooking makes it stiff and can make it cloudy or sugary.

“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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