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Dessert

Preserves, Jellies, Etc

A method for making fruit preserves or jellies using sugar, water, egg white, and fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Preserves, Jellies, Etc

Oven, in the book's wordsA very moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve sugar in water in a preserving kettle.

  2. Add egg white and beat well.

  3. Heat mixture, stirring with a wooden spoon until it begins to swell and boil.

  4. Add a little cold water and let it boil again.

  5. Remove scum.

  6. Repeat until syrup is clear and pours like oil from the spoon.

Cook the fruit

  1. For every pound of fruit, use ¾ pound of sugar.

  2. Boil fruit in a porcelain‑lined or granite‑ware dish.

  3. Drain fruit from syrup.

Dry the fruit

  1. Dry fruit in a moderate oven.

  2. Turn fruit every 6‑8 hours.

  3. Sift powdered sugar over fruit each time.

  4. Store dried fruit in a dry place.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as a thick syrup, preserves it by drawing out moisture.
Egg white
Its proteins rise to the surface with the impurities, so scum can be removed to clarify the syrup.
Fruit of choice
The main ingredient, which is cooked in syrup and then dried to become preserved.

The step that matters

Repeat until syrup is clear and pours like oil from the spoon.. Syrup must be fully clarified and cooked to the right density; cloudy or thin syrup can leave the preserve less clear and less stable.

“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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