Skip to main content
Dessert

Strawberry Preserves

A sweet preserve made by cooking strawberries with sugar and water.

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

Why it works: Coffee and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,344 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Strawberry Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Weigh the strawberries.

  2. In a kettle, combine the sugar with just enough water to prevent sticking.

  3. Boil the sugar until it becomes transparent.

Make the preserves

  1. Add the strawberries and cook for 30 minutes, skimming constantly.

  2. Remove the strawberries to a flat dish.

  3. Boil the syrup for 20 minutes.

  4. Add the strawberries back to the syrup and boil for another 20 minutes.

Seal

  1. Remove from heat and seal.

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. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Provide the fruit flavor and body, and pectin that helps the preserve set.
Coffee sugar
Provides sweetness and, at high concentration, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Removing the strawberries before boiling the syrup. Boiling the fruit for a long time in syrup can break it down and make it tough or mushy. Cooking the syrup alone first and returning the fruit for a shorter final boil helps it keep its shape and fresh flavor.

“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.

More strawberry preserves recipes

Sun-Dried 4 See all 80 →

You might also like

Coffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipesCoffee CustardCoffee Custard27 recipesCoffee CakeCoffee Cake21 recipesCoffee Bavarian CreamCoffee Bavarian Cream14 recipes