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Gooseberry and Currant Jam

A jam made from gooseberries and currant juice sweetened with preserving sugar.

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 the fruit

  1. Remove the heads and tails from the gooseberries and place them in a preserving pan by the fire to extract some juice.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for 10 minutes.

Make the jam

  1. Gradually add the sugar and then the red currant juice.

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

  3. Remove any scum that rises.

  4. Stir well towards the end of the boiling process.

Pot and store

  1. Pour the jam into pots, cover closely, and store in a cool, dry 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. 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

Gooseberries
Provide the main fruit body and natural pectin that helps the jam set.
Preserving sugar
Sweetens the jam and, with the fruit's acid and pectin, helps it set and keep.
Currant juice
Adds liquid and tart acidity that brightens the flavour and supports setting.

The step that matters

Boil until the jam sets when tested on a cold plate. Setting depends on reaching the point where pectin, acid and sugar form a gel. Stopping too early leaves runny jam, while boiling too long can darken and dull the 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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