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To Preserve Fruit Without Sugar

A method for preserving fruit in sealed bottles without adding sugar, using hay to keep bottles apart during boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Preserve Fruit Without Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Gather the fruit before it is very ripe.

  2. Place the fruit in wide-mouthed bottles, filling them completely.

  3. Cork the bottles tightly and seal the corks.

Heat in a hay bath

  1. In a large saucepan, place some hay and set the bottles inside, with hay between them to prevent touching.

  2. Fill the saucepan with water to the necks of the bottles.

  3. Heat the saucepan over the fire until the water is nearly boiling, then remove it from the heat.

  4. Let the bottles stand until they are cold.

Store

  1. Store the bottles in a cool place until needed.

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. Plum + apricottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Pineapple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pineapple + plumtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together147 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol (fusel, malty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cherries
Supplies the fruit flesh, natural sugars and acids that give the preserve its flavour.
Strawberries
Supplies the fruit flesh, natural sugars and acids that give the preserve its flavour.
Plums
Supplies the fruit flesh, natural sugars and acids that give the preserve its flavour.
Apricots
Supplies the fruit flesh, natural sugars and acids that give the preserve its flavour.
Gooseberries
Supplies the fruit flesh, natural sugars and acids that give the preserve its flavour.
Sliced pineapple
Supplies the fruit flesh, natural sugars and acids that give the preserve its flavour.

The step that matters

Heating the bottles in the water bath. The water should be heated to just below boiling and held there, not rapidly boiled. Gentle, even heat lets the fruit cook through without breaking apart and reduces the risk of glass bottles cracking from sudden temperature change.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (plum, apricot):

  1. Peachfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, apricot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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