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To Preserve Barberries in Bunches

A method for preserving barberries by making syrup, adding sugar, and storing in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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To Preserve Barberries in Bunches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barberries

  1. Reserve the largest bunches of barberries.

  2. Pick the rest from the stalks.

Make the syrup

  1. Add enough water to make a syrup for the bunches. Boil until soft.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Add 1½ lb of loaf sugar to every pint of juice. Boil and skim well.

Preserve

  1. Add ½ lb of barberries in bunches to every pint of syrup. Boil until clear.

  2. Transfer to pots or glasses.

  3. Cover with 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

Barberries
Provide the tart fruit flavour and the juice that forms the syrup.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps preserve the fruit in the finished syrup.

The step that matters

Boil until clear. Boiling the bunches in the syrup until clear lets the fruit take up sugar and become translucent. Stopping too early leaves the syrup thin and the fruit less preserved.

“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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