Home › The Principles of Cookery › Red Currant

Red Currant

This fruit is acceptable at the dessert, being of a pleasant acid taste. It is much used for jellies, jams, and wines. Forsyth says it is the most agreeable of all the small fruits, either for the table or the kitchen; and that it continues longer in succession than any other. According to Withering, the juice gives an agreeable acid to punch; and Professor Martyn says it was a common beverage in Paris in 1763. Its medicinal qualities are similar to those of other sub-acid fruits, allaying thirst, lessening an over-secretion of the bile, and correcting a putrid and scorbutic state of the fluids. The red currant is a native of the northern parts of Europe, and is found in hedges and woods in England. The berries of this shrub in its wild state are red; cultivation has produced white and pale-red berried varieties. Professor Martyn observes that "the currant does not seem to have been known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, as the Southern nations of Europe have not even an appropriate name to it at this day. The old French name Groseilles d'outre mer proclaims their having been strangers imported. Our English name of currant is evidently from the similitude of the fruit to that of the Uva corinthica, the small grape of Zante, or the common grocers' corinths or currants."