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Dessert

Home-made Raisins

This recipe describes making raisins by drying grapes in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Gibson, Marietta Fauntleroy Hollyday, "Mrs. C. H. Gibson." · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Home-made Raisins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather grapes when ripe; after washing them, pick them off the bunches.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Make a thick syrup of two pounds of sugar and one pint of water.

  2. Drop the grapes into the kettle and keep them in the syrup until they split open, when most of the side will settle in the kettle.

Dry and pack

  1. Skim them out, and after drying them on plates pack them down in sugar.

  2. The same syrup can be used several times.

Serve

  1. These are very good in puddings or cake.

By Gibson, Marietta Fauntleroy Hollyday, "Mrs. C. H. Gibson.". 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. See the original page.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, in thick syrup, draws water out of the grapes so they shrink and dry.

The step that matters

Keeping the grapes in the syrup until they split. Sugar in a thick syrup pulls moisture out of the grape skins through osmosis, so the fruit shrinks and concentrates. Leaving them too short or too long changes how dry and chewy the result becomes.

“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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