Skip to main content
Preserve

Canned Fruits and Vegetables

A method for preserving fresh fruit and vegetables in syrup or hot water by canning.

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

Why it works: Plum and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Canned Fruits and Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select perfectly fresh and sound fruit, carefully picking over to avoid any ill flavor.

  2. Prepare a syrup by dissolving sugar in water according to the type of fruit.

  3. Place a wet hot cloth in a pan and set a rinsed jar on it.

Fill the jars

  1. Add a silver spoon and a cup of syrup to the jar, then fill with fruit to the top.

  2. Remove the spoon and cover the fruit with syrup.

  3. Allow the jar to cool for 10-15 minutes, then fill to the top with syrup or hot water.

Seal and store

  1. Seal the jar and tighten the lid once it has cooled.

  2. Store in a cool, dark 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. Plum + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Plum + peachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pear + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Peach + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Plum + quincetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together92 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and syrup, and helps preserve the fruit's texture and flavor.
Fresh fruit
Provides the main flavor and body of the preserved contents.

The step that matters

Filling the jar to the top with fruit and syrup. Fruit must be fully covered by syrup and no air pockets should remain. Exposed fruit can spoil and trapped air supports mold growth, so the jar should be filled to the top before sealing.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (plum, peach, pear, pineapple, grape, tomato, quince):

  1. Apricotfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, peach, pear, pineapple, grape, tomato, quince. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes