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Dessert

Red Gooseberry Jam

A jam made from red gooseberries, sugar, and water, cooked until thick and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Red Gooseberry Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pulp

  1. Pick and place the red gooseberries in a preserving pan with 1 pint of water.

  2. Stir over heat until the fruit dissolves, then strain through a fine sieve into a large pan.

Make the jam

  1. Measure the pulp and add an equal weight of sugar.

  2. Boil the sugar with just enough water to dissolve it until it reaches the pearl stage.

  3. Add the pulp to the sugar syrup and stir continuously until it thickens enough to hang in drops from a spoon.

Jar

  1. Pour the jam into jars and cover with paper dipped in brandy, securing with string.

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

Red gooseberries
Provide the fruit pulp and natural pectin and acid that help the jam set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens the jam while helping it keep and set.

The step that matters

Stir continuously while the jam thickens. As water evaporates the sugar concentration rises and the jam can scorch or stick to the base of the pan. Constant stirring spreads the heat and shows when the set point of drops hanging from a spoon is reached.

“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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