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Delicious Red Currant Jam

Jam made from red currants and powdered sugar, boiled until thick.

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 ↓

Delicious Red Currant Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather red currants on a dry day, free from dust.

  2. Strip the currants from the stalks and weigh them.

Cook the jam

  1. Place the currants in a preserving pan with the powdered sugar.

  2. Stir gently over a brisk fire and boil for exactly 8 minutes from the first full boil.

  3. Do not fill the pan more than two-thirds full to prevent overflow.

  4. If the jam rises, lift the pan from the fire for a moment.

  5. For a sweeter jam, use equal weights of fruit and sugar and boil for 7 minutes.

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 fruit, acidity and natural pectin that help the jam thicken and set.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the jam and, when boiled with the fruit, helps it set and keeps it preserved.

The step that matters

Boil for exactly 8 minutes from the first full boil. Boiling concentrates the sugar and fruit pectin so the jam sets. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny, while boiling too long can make it stiff and dull in flavour.

“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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