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Dessert

French Currant Jelly

A jelly made from white and red currants, sugar, and currant juice, boiled and set in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 57 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

French Currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Mix the white and red currants in a pot over gentle heat until they release their juice.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Weigh the juice.

Make the syrup

  1. Break 3 lbs of sugar into large lumps.

  2. Dip the sugar lumps in cold water.

  3. Boil the sugar until it forms a thick syrup.

  4. Stir the syrup constantly until it falls in thick masses from the skimmer.

Finish and set

  1. Pour the currant juice into the syrup.

  2. Boil quickly for 5 minutes, skimming off any scum.

  3. Pour the jelly into jars or warm glasses.

  4. Set the jars in a 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. Red currant + curranttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. White currant + curranttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. White currant + red curranttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  5. 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

Red currants
Provide most of the juice and natural pectin and acidity that help the jelly set.
White currants
Add juice and acidity to the jelly, contributing to its set and bright flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps it gel.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice and sugar quickly. Boiling briskly for a short time drives off water and concentrates the sugar, pectin and acid so the jelly sets. Boiling too long can darken the flavour and make the set too stiff.

Swap the white currant

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

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. White currantthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against red currant, sugar, currant. 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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