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Red Currant Jellt

A preserve made from red and white currants boiled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 Jellt

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Remove stems from red currants and mix with white currants in a clean preserving pan.

  2. Gently stir over a clear fire until the juice flows freely.

  3. Pour mixture into a fine hair sieve and let it drain without pressure.

  4. Pass the juice through a folded muslin or jelly bag.

Make the jelly

  1. Weigh the juice and boil it rapidly for 15 minutes.

  2. For each pound of juice, add 8 ounces of coarsely powdered sugar and stir off the heat until dissolved.

  3. Boil the jelly for an additional 8 minutes.

  4. Skim off any foam that rises before and after adding the sugar to ensure a clear preserve.

  5. Pour the jelly into jars.

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 + 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, tartness, and natural pectin for the jelly to set.
White currants
Add extra juice and pectin along with a milder, lighter flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and, with boiling, helps the jelly reach a firm set.

The step that matters

Skimming foam before and after adding the sugar. Foam contains impurities and air that cloud the jelly. Removing it before and after adding sugar keeps the preserve clear and glossy.

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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