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Strawberry Preserves

A preserve made by cooking strawberries with sugar and cream of tartar until jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberry Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the strawberries well and weigh them.

  2. Add an equal weight of sugar to the strawberries.

  3. Add cream of tartar to the sugar, mixing well.

  4. Sprinkle the sugar mixture over the strawberries and shake gently.

Cook and set

  1. Place the mixture over low heat until the juice starts, then cook on brisk heat for 20 minutes.

  2. Turn the mixture onto shallow platters and let it stand overnight or until the juice forms a thin jelly.

  3. While it stands, gently turn the berries with a knife two or three times.

Pack

  1. When ready, pack into jars while cold and seal with paraffin.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Provide the fruit, flavour and bulk of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and draws out juice, and helps it thicken and keep.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps the sugar stay dissolved and supports a smooth, set texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the mixture on brisk heat. Once the juice starts, cooking too gently or too long can scorch the sugar or fail to reach the thick, gel-like set. Watch the pot and keep the boil steady for the full 20 minutes.

“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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