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Red Currant Jelly

A jelly made from red and white currants with coarse sugar, boiled and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Red Currant Jelly

Why it works: Red currant and white currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Red Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Remove the stems from the red currants.

  2. Mix them with the white currants in a preserving pan.

  3. Stir gently over medium heat until the juice flows freely.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  5. Let it drain without pressure.

  6. Weigh the juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil it rapidly for 15 minutes.

  2. Add 8 oz of sugar for each pound of juice.

  3. Stir until dissolved.

  4. Boil the jelly for an additional 8 minutes.

  5. Skim off any scum.

  6. Pour the jelly into jars.

  7. Let it cool.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + white curranttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  3. White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together59 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the main fruit flavour, natural pectin and acidity that help the jelly set.
White currants
Add extra pectin and acidity to support a firm set, with a milder flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, with pectin and acid, helps it gel as it boils.

The step that matters

Boil the jelly for an additional 8 minutes. Boiling after the sugar dissolves concentrates the juice and sugar so the pectin can set. Too short a boil leaves it runny; too long can darken the flavour and make the set stiff.

Swap the white currant

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

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red 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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