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Preserved Raspberries

A preserve made from raspberries and currants sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

Preserved Raspberries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and sugar

  1. Gather raspberries on a dry day.

  2. Measure the raspberries.

  3. Spread the raspberries on large dishes without heaping them.

  4. Pound the sugar to a powder.

  5. Sift the powdered sugar over the raspberries.

  6. Squeeze the currants through a linen bag that has been wrung out of cold water.

  7. Prepare 1 pound of sugar for each pint of currant juice.

Make the syrup

  1. Put the sugar into a preserving kettle.

  2. Pour the currant juice over the sugar in the kettle.

  3. Heat the mixture until the sugar melts.

  4. Boil and skim the mixture for 10 minutes.

  5. When no more scum rises, add the raspberries to the kettle.

  6. Scald the raspberries in the mixture.

Rest and store

  1. Cover the kettle.

  2. Set the kettle aside for 2 hours.

  3. Return the kettle to the fire for about 5 minutes.

  4. Set the kettle aside for another 2 hours.

  5. Repeat this process two more times, ensuring the raspberries do not boil.

  6. Once cooled, transfer the raspberries to glass jars for storage.

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 + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Raspberries
Provide the fruit, flavour and bulk of the preserve.
Fine loaf sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, preserves it by drawing out water.
Ripe currants
Supply juice rich in natural pectin and acid to help the preserve set and taste bright.

The step that matters

Scalding the raspberries without boiling them. Boiling breaks down the fruit and toughens or collapses its shape, while gentle heating softens it enough to absorb syrup and keep whole berries in the preserve.

“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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