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Gooseberry and Currant Jam

A jam made from gooseberries, preserving sugar, and currant juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and currant 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 ↓

Gooseberry and Currant Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Head and tail the gooseberries.

  2. Place them in a preserving pan and let them sit by the fire to extract some juice.

Make the jam

  1. Bring to a boil and cook for about 10 minutes.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and then the currant juice.

  3. Boil until the jam sets when tested on a cold plate.

  4. Remove the scum as it rises and stir well towards the end.

Jar and store

  1. Pour into jars, cover tightly, and store.

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. 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 hairy gooseberries
Provide the fruit base, along with natural pectin and tartness that shape the jam's flavour.
Preserving sugar
Sweetens the jam and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps it set and keep.
Currant juice
Adds extra liquid and pectin-rich acidity, supporting the set and a sharper flavour.

The step that matters

Boil until the jam sets. Setting depends on sugar, pectin and acid reaching the right concentration. Undercooking leaves runny jam, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull in flavour. Testing on a cold plate shows when the jam has reached its set point.

“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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