Skip to main content
Preserve

Preservation of Fruits

A method of preserving various fruits by boiling them, filling jars, and sealing with corks, wax, tallow, and rosin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pear and plum 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 ↓

Preservation of Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Gather and store

  1. Gather fruits on a dry, clear day, avoiding bruising.

  2. Pack apples and pears in dry sand, grain, or sawdust in a cool, dry cellar.

  3. For grapes, pack in shallow boxes lined with white paper, discarding any decayed ones.

  4. For berries, pick carefully, rejecting blighted ones.

  5. Pare peaches and plums, removing pits.

Pack and seal

  1. In a porcelain kettle, combine fruit with a little water and boil just long enough to scald.

  2. Fill warmed jars with the hot fruit, stirring with a small slice to expel air bubbles.

  3. Seal jars quickly using corks and wax or a mixture of melted tallow and rosin.

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. Pear + plumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

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

  2. Apple + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Peach + plumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

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

  4. Pear + peachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

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

  5. Apple + grapetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fruits
The main food being preserved; its texture and flavor are what the method protects.
Tallow
Forms a waxy, airtight seal over the jar opening to keep air out.
Rosin
Hardens with tallow to make a firm, adhesive sealing wax.

The step that matters

Seal jars quickly. Hot fruit must be sealed while the jar is still warm so that cooling pulls a vacuum and air cannot re-enter to spoil the contents.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, pear, peach, plum):

  1. Apricotfits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, pear, peach, plum. 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.

More fruit preservation recipes

Bottled 3 See all 4 →

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes