Skip to main content
Dessert

To Preserve Barberries in Bunches

Preserves barberries in syrup, tied in bunches, boiled until transparent, then jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

To Preserve Barberries in Bunches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Take the finest barberries without stones that can be procured.

  2. Tie them together in bunches of four or five sprigs.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. For each half pound of the fruit, boil one pound of very good sugar in a pint of water for twenty minutes, and clear it well from scum.

  2. Throw in the fruit, let it heat gently, and then boil from five to seven minutes until it is perfectly transparent.

  3. If any snapping noise is heard, press the fruit equally down into the syrup until the berries burst.

Jar and serve

  1. Turn the preserve into jars, covering with skin or two or three folds of thick paper, as soon as it is perfectly cold.

  2. Use the preserve as garnish for sweet dishes or puddings.

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

Barberries (in the method)
Provide the tart fruit that is cooked until transparent and keeps its shape in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, once boiled, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Pressing the berries until they burst. The snapping sound signals the skins are splitting as the fruit cooks. Pressing them evenly into the syrup helps the berries release juice and take on syrup, so the preserve becomes uniformly clear rather than uneven.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes