Skip to main content
Dessert

Preserved Fruits

Preserved gooseberries and currants in clarified sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

Preserved Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gooseberries

  1. Cut the gooseberries through the eye down to the stem and remove the seeds.

  2. String the gooseberries on white thread, tying a knot at each end.

  3. Dissolve ½ cup of coarse sea salt in a pan of clean cold water and soak the gooseberries overnight.

  4. The next day, drain and blanch the gooseberries in clear water until soft.

  5. Drain the gooseberries in a sieve.

Prepare the currants

  1. For the currants, remove the pips using a sharp quill, being careful not to damage the fruit.

  2. Tie five or six bunches of currants together by their stalks or on a piece of slit wood.

Make the syrup and preserve

  1. Boil 2.5 to 3 pounds of clarified sugar with enough water to allow the currants to float until it reaches the 'Large Pearl' stage.

  2. Add the currants to the boiling sugar and cook for five to six times, skimming off any scum that forms.

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. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the syrup that preserves the fruit and makes it sweet.
Gooseberries
Provide the main fruit body that softens and holds its shape in the syrup.
Currants
Supply the main fruit that is cooked in the boiling syrup until preserved.

The step that matters

Cooking the currants in the boiling sugar. Sugar syrup must reach the Large Pearl stage before the fruit goes in, and the fruit must be cooked only as directed. Skimming removes scum that would cloud the preserve and spoil its clarity.

“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.

You might also like

Red Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesCurrant and Raspberry IceCurrant and Raspberry Ice7 recipes