Fruit Preserves
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit and syrup
Halve the fruit or leave it whole.
Optionally, add a few pits for flavor.
Weigh the fruit and measure out ¾ or ½ as much sugar.
Make syrup by combining the sugar with ½ as much water.
Cook the syrup until thick, about the consistency of molasses.
Cook and jar
Add the fruit to the syrup and cook until transparent, removing scum as it forms.
Skim the fruit from the syrup and fill jars, pouring in syrup to overflowing.
Tightly screw on the covers, turn jars upside down, and tighten covers as they cool.
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
What each ingredient does
- Fruit
- Provides the main body and flavor of the preserve as it cooks in the syrup.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the preserve and thickens the syrup as it cooks down.
- Water
- Dissolves the sugar so it can form a syrup that the fruit cooks in.
The step that matters
Cooking the syrup to the right thickness. Sugar concentration controls how well the preserve keeps and sets. Syrup cooked until thick, like molasses, has enough sugar to resist spoilage, while thinner syrup may let the fruit ferment or mould.
“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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