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Dessert

Red Currant Jam

A jam made from red currants and preserving sugar, cooked until thickened.

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 ↓

Red Currant Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stalks from the red currants.

  2. Place the currants in a preserving pan and add the preserving sugar.

Cook the jam

  1. Stir occasionally until the mixture is nearly boiling.

  2. Stir almost continuously.

  3. Boil gently for about 40 minutes, or until a small amount sets when poured on a cold plate.

Jar and store

  1. Pour the jam into jars.

  2. Cover the jars tightly.

  3. Store the 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 + 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, pectin and acidity that give the jam its flavour and body.
Preserving sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it set and keep by drawing water out of the fruit.

The step that matters

Boiling until the jam sets. Boiling drives off water and concentrates sugar and pectin so the jam sets as it cools. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while boiling too long can make it dark and taste cooked.

“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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