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Ginger Preserves

A sweet preserve made by boiling ginger in sugar syrup and refrigerating.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Ginger Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ginger

  1. Soak the peeled ginger in cold water for 15 minutes.

  2. Boil the ginger in three changes of water until very tender.

  3. Drain the ginger and place it in ice water.

Make the syrup

  1. For the syrup, combine 1¼ pounds of sugar with 1 cup of water for each pound of sugar.

  2. Boil the syrup and skim until no more foam rises.

  3. Once the syrup is cold, dry the ginger and add it to the syrup.

  4. Let the mixture sit for 24 hours.

Finish and store

  1. Drain the ginger and reheat the syrup until it is warm.

  2. Add the ginger back into the syrup and let it sit for 2 days.

  3. Reboil the syrup and pour it over the ginger while hot.

  4. Cover the preserves closely.

  5. The preserves can be used in about 2 weeks.

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. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Green ginger
Provides the main texture and the spicy flavor that the preserves are built around.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserves and, in a thick syrup, draws moisture out of the ginger to preserve it.

The step that matters

Skimming the syrup until no more foam rises. Foam carries impurities from the sugar and any remaining ginger residue. Removing it keeps the syrup clear and reduces the chance of spoilage during the long rest.

“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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