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Dessert

Ginger Preserves

A preserved ginger made by boiling ginger and syrup, then storing in the syrup.

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. Pare the ginger roots and soak them 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 and 1 cup of water for each pound of sugar.

  2. Boil the syrup and skim until the scum stops rising.

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

  4. Let the ginger sit in the syrup for 24 hours.

Finish the preserves

  1. Drain the ginger and reheat the syrup until it is blood 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, then cover closely.

  4. 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

Roots of green ginger
Provides the main flavor and the preserved fruit-like pieces that become tender after boiling.
Sugar
Preserves the ginger and gives the syrup its sweetness and body.

The step that matters

Boiling the ginger in several changes of water. Ginger must be boiled until very tender before it meets the sugar, because sugar syrup hardens the tissue and prevents softening later. Changing the water reduces its raw, sharp bite.

“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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