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To Preserve Strawberries Whole

A method for preserving whole strawberries by sugaring and simmering in a currant syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and red currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

To Preserve Strawberries Whole

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lay strawberries in a large dish and sprinkle half the sugar over them.

  2. Gently shake the dish to ensure the sugar touches the underside of the fruit.

Make the syrup and simmer

  1. The next day, make a thin syrup with the remaining sugar and red currant juice.

  2. Simmer the strawberries in the syrup until sufficiently jellied.

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 + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Provide the fruit itself, which is preserved whole and gives the dish its flavor and body.
Double refined sugar
Draws moisture out of the fruit and preserves it, while adding sweetness and helping the syrup set.
Red currant juice
Adds acidity and natural pectin, which help the syrup thicken and set into a jelly.

The step that matters

Simmering until jellied. Sugar, acid and pectin from the currant juice set the syrup as it reduces and thickens. Stop when the syrup gels rather than cooking longer, since overcooking can toughen the strawberries and darken their color.

“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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