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Dessert

Candied Strawberries

Candied strawberries are strawberries preserved in a series of sugar syrups of increasing concentration.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Candied Strawberries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the berries

  1. Bleach the strawberries in a sulfur room, rinse in cold alum water, and let dry for 1 hour.

  2. Place the berries on silver-coated wire trays stacked in an enameled iron kettle or earthenware jar.

Soak in syrup

  1. Pour cold syrup at 28° Beaume over the berries and leave for 24 hours.

  2. Drain and replace with new syrup of the same strength, leaving for another 24 hours.

  3. Reduce the syrup by adding water to 18° Beaume, allow to cool slightly, and pour over the fruit.

  4. After 6 hours, drain and replace with syrup at 19° Beaume.

  5. Every 12 hours, replace with syrup a degree stronger, pouring it warm until reaching 24° 45.

  6. Then leave 24 hours between each operation until reaching 28° Beaume.

Finish

  1. For the final syrup, color it red if desired, and ensure the berries are full of sugar and transparent.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 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

Fresh strawberries
The fruit that is infused with sugar and becomes translucent as syrup replaces its water.
Sugar
Builds the syrup that penetrates the fruit, sweetening it and preserving it through repeated soaking.
Glucose syrup
Adds syrup body that resists crystallization, helping the berries stay smooth and glossy.

The step that matters

Gradually raising syrup strength. Moving to stronger syrup in small steps lets sugar slowly replace the water in the berries. Jumping too fast can shrink and toughen the fruit, so the berries stay plump and transparent.

“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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