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Dessert

American Fruit Preserving Powder

A powdered preservative for fruit, made by dissolving preserving powder in boiling water and adding sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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American Fruit Preserving Powder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquid

  1. Dissolve the Preserving Powder in boiling water and label it as 'American Preserving Liquid'.

Cook the fruit

  1. Prepare the fruit by washing and cutting as needed.

  2. Add 2 to 6 ounces of sugar to each pound or quart of fruit, adjusting to taste.

  3. Cook the fruit and sugar mixture slowly until it reaches boiling point.

  4. Remove from heat and pour off most of the juice into another vessel.

  5. Add 1 heaping tablespoon of Preserving Powder and 1 tablespoon of Preserving Liquid for every 8 pounds of fruit and sugar.

  6. Stir until the Powder is dissolved, then return the syrup to the fruit.

  7. Cook for at least 5 minutes for berries and small fruits, or 10 minutes for larger fruits.

Jar

  1. Transfer the mixture into jars, filling them completely and covering the fruit with syrup.

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

What each ingredient does

Preserving powder
Sets the fruit into a gel so the preserve holds its shape.
White sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps the preserve set and keep.
Fruit
Provides the flavour, colour and bulk of the preserve.

The step that matters

Stirring the powder into the syrup. Powder added to hot liquid can clump and fail to dissolve evenly, so it must be stirred until fully dissolved before the syrup returns to the fruit. Uneven dissolving leaves weak or patchy set.

“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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