Why it works: Currant and sugar 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 ↓
Currant Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Extract the juice
Place currants in stone jars and submerge them in cold water in a kettle.
Bring the water to a boil and maintain the boiling level with hot water as needed.
Once the currants are soft, press out the juice and measure it.
Make the jelly
For each pint of juice, add an equal pound of granulated sugar.
Boil the juice in a kettle.
Heat the sugar in a large bread pan in the oven.
After boiling the juice for eight minutes, add the heated sugar.
Boil for five more minutes.
Pour the jelly onto a spoon to prevent cracking before filling tumblers.
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.
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Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Provide the pectin, acid and flavor that the jelly is built from.
- Granulated sugar
- Sweetens the jelly and helps it set when boiled with the juice.
The step that matters
Add the heated sugar after eight minutes of boiling. Sugar must be hot and dissolved into the boiling juice so the mixture returns to a boil quickly and sets properly. Cold sugar would cool the juice and delay or weaken the set.
“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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