Green Gooseberries for Tarts
Ingredients
Directions
Pack the bottles
Fill clean, dry, wide-necked bottles with gooseberries before they reach full growth.
Cork the bottles lightly and wrap a little hay around each.
Heat the fruit
Set the bottles upright in a pot of cold water and gradually bring to a boil.
Gently simmer the fruit until it appears shrunken and perfectly scalded.
Fill, seal and store
Remove the bottles and fill them up with the contents of one or two bottles.
Pour scalding water into the bottles to cover the gooseberries completely.
Cork the bottles well and cover the necks with melted rosin.
Store in a cool place.
Use the preserves
When ready to use, pour off most of the water and add sugar as for fresh fruit.
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
- Gooseberries
- Provide the fruit, its tartness and the body of the preserve.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the gooseberries' sharp acidity when used.
The step that matters
Gently simmer until scalded. Gentle heat softens the fruit and drives out air without breaking the skins, so the gooseberries keep their shape. Boiling hard would burst the skins and turn the fruit mushy in the bottles.
“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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