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Black Currant Jam
Make as above but cook fifteen minutes before adding sugar, then fifteen minutes before removing, stirring all the while.
This is a continuation entry: it assumes you have just read the currant jam recipe above it, and gives only the changes. Black currants need longer cooking than red, and that is the whole point of the note.
- What "as above" meansThe entry gives only the changes, so the preceding jam method supplies everything else, including the proportions. Since no quantities appear here, a common working proportion for currants is equal weights fruit and sugar, or three-quarters sugar to fruit for a sharper set.
- Why black currants get thirty minutesBlack currant skins are thick and leathery and will stay that way in the finished jam if they are not softened before sugar goes in. Sugar sets skins and tightens them, so the first fifteen minutes of cooking is doing the real work.
- Add water for the first stageUnlike red currants, black currants are dry-fleshed and can scorch in a dry pan. Many modern methods add water for the pre-sugar cook, often somewhere between half a cup and a cup per pound of fruit, and it should be simmering, not merely warm. The recipe as printed says nothing either way.
- Stirring is not optionalThe instruction to stir "all the while" is the hinge, and it matters most once sugar is in, when the mixture sticks and burns quickly. Scorched sugar taints the whole batch.
- Judge the set, not the clockFifteen minutes after sugar is a reasonable guide, but pan width and fruit ripeness change everything. Test at 220F on a thermometer, or by the cold-saucer method — a spoonful chilled a minute should wrinkle when pushed.
- Pectin is on your sideBlack currants are among the highest-pectin fruits in the garden and also high in acid, so no added pectin or lemon is needed. Overcooking is the more likely fault; a stiff, dark, slightly bitter jam means it went too far.
- Jars and keepingThe recipe gives no potting or storage instruction. For shelf storage now, fill sterilised jars to a quarter inch of the rim and process ten minutes in a boiling water bath; otherwise refrigerate and use within a month.
- YieldTwo pounds of fruit with two pounds of sugar gives roughly five to six half-pint jars.
Black currants have long been valued in British and northern European kitchens more as a medicine cabinet than a dessert — the fruit is exceptionally high in vitamin C, and currant jam and syrup were the standard household remedy for sore throats and winter colds well before that vitamin was identified. The bush fell out of favour in the United States in the early twentieth century, when black currants were found to host part of the life cycle of white pine blister rust and cultivation was banned or restricted in many states, which is why the fruit is far more familiar to European readers than American ones. This recipe is written as a brief amendment to the entry above rather than as a standalone: preserving is assumed knowledge, and the author's job is only to note where one fruit departs from another.