Name: To Preserve Green Gages
Ingredients: large fine green gages; 1½ pounds loaf sugar for each pound of fruit; ½ pint water for each pound and a half of sugar

To Preserve Green Gages

Ingredients

large fine green gages
1½ pounds loaf sugar for each pound of fruit
½ pint water for each pound and a half of sugar

Directions

Prepare

Weigh the green gages and prepare 1½ pounds of sugar for each pound of fruit.
Layer fresh vine leaves and gages in a porcelain preserving kettle, finishing with vine leaves on top.
Fill the kettle with hard water and set it over low heat.
When the gages float, remove them and peel them, placing them on a sieve.

Green the fruit

Replace the gages in the kettle with fresh vine leaves and water, covering tightly.
Hang the kettle above the fire to warm slowly for 6 hours without boiling.
Once the gages are green, remove them and drain on a hair sieve.

Make the syrup and preserve

Make a syrup with 1½ pounds of sugar and ½ pint of water, boil and skim it.
Add the gages to the syrup and boil gently for 15 minutes.
Remove the gages and let them cool.
The next day, boil the gages in the same syrup for another 15 minutes.
When cool, transfer the gages and syrup into glass jars and seal with brandy 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

What each ingredient does

Green gages: Provide the fruit that is softened, greened and preserved in syrup.
Loaf sugar: Sweetens the fruit and, at this concentration, preserves it by drawing out water.
Water: Dissolves the sugar into a syrup and carries heat to soften the fruit gently.

The step that matters

Warming without boiling. Holding the kettle just below boiling softens the fruit slowly and keeps its skin and shape intact. Boiling would break the flesh apart and make the gages mushy.

“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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To Preserve Green Gages