Red Gooseberry Jam
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Pick and place the ripe red gooseberries in a preserving pan with 1 pint of water for every half bushel of fruit.
Stir over heat until the gooseberries dissolve, then strain through a fine sieve into a large pan.
Make the jam
Boil the sugar with just enough water to dissolve it until it reaches the pearl stage.
Add the pulp to the sugar syrup and stir continuously until it thickens enough to hang in drops from a spoon.
Jar and cover
Pour the jam into jars and cover with circular pieces of paper dipped in brandy, securing with paper and string.
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 that help the jam set.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the jam and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps it set.
The step that matters
Stirring the pulp into the syrup until it thickens. Pectin and sugar set as the mixture cooks, so stopping too early leaves runny jam, while cooking too long can scorch it and darken the flavour.
“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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