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Dessert

To Dry Ripe Gooseberries with Sugar

A preserve of ripe gooseberries dried in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 3 ingredients
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To Dry Ripe Gooseberries with Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the tops off ripe gooseberries, leaving the stalks, and seed them as for unripe gooseberries.

  2. Free large ripe gooseberries from their blossoms and place them in cold syrup in which cherries or other fruit has been boiled for drying.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Boil the fruit in syrup made with one pound of sugar to one pint of water until clear, tender, and the syrup thick.

  2. Heat the mixture very gradually, keeping it at the point of boiling for a few minutes before setting.

Dry and finish

  1. After a couple of days, drain the syrup, simmer, skim, and pour it over the gooseberries immediately after removing them from the fire.

  2. After forty-eight hours, drain the gooseberries again and lay them singly on plates or dishes, placing them in a gentle stove.

By Eliza Acton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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
Forms a thick syrup that sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it.
Gooseberries (in the method)
The main fruit, which becomes tender and clear as it cooks in the syrup.
Water
Dissolves the sugar to make the syrup in which the fruit is cooked.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture gradually. Heating slowly lets sugar dissolve and the syrup penetrate the fruit evenly, so the gooseberries cook through without bursting or toughening.

“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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