Skip to main content
Dessert

Elderberry Preserve

A preserve made from elderberries, sugar, and lemon juice and rind, cooked into a jelly consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Elderberry Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup with the lemon juice and rind, using minimal water.

  2. Skim the syrup if necessary.

Cook the fruit

  1. Add the elderberries and cook for 20 minutes.

  2. Boil the syrup until it reaches a jelly consistency.

Jar and cover

  1. Strain the mixture into jars or glasses.

  2. Pour the syrup over the fruit until the jar is full.

  3. Cover the jars after 24 hours.

  4. If using an open jar, place a piece of thin paper on top and secure with a cloth or thick paper.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Elderberries
Provide the fruit, flavour and colour of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, once boiled, helps it set to a jelly-like texture.
Lemon
Adds acidity, which helps the syrup set and brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until it reaches a jelly consistency. Boiling concentrates the sugar and lets the syrup gel as it cools. Stopping too early leaves it runny and prone to spoiling, while boiling too long makes it stiff and overly sugary.

“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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes