Skip to main content
Dessert

Barberry Preserves

A sweet preserve made from barberries, molasses, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Molasses and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Barberry Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the molasses

  1. Boil the molasses and skim off any foam.

  2. Add the barberries and simmer until soft.

Melt the sugar and combine

  1. Melt the sugar over low heat and skim it clean.

  2. Add the barberries to the melted sugar and simmer until soft.

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. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Barberries
Provide the fruit itself, with a tart flavour that balances the sweetness.
Common molasses
Adds deep, dark sweetness and a rich flavour, and keeps the preserve moist.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body, and helps preserve the fruit by binding up its water.

The step that matters

Simmering until the barberries soften. Molasses and melted sugar can scorch quickly over direct heat, and scorched sugar tastes bitter. Keeping the heat low and controlled prevents darkening and burning while the fruit softens.

“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.

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesMolasses Sponge CakeMolasses Sponge Cake9 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes