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Dessert

Strawberry or Raspberry Preserve

A preserve made from strawberries or raspberries with sugar and optional red currant juice.

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 ↓

Strawberry or Raspberry Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Combine

  1. Pick the fruit and place it in a pot.

  2. Add ¾ pound of sifted sugar for every pound of fruit.

  3. If desired, add some red currant juice.

Cook and jar

  1. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

  2. Skim off any foam that forms on the surface.

  3. Pour the preserve into jars.

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 or raspberries
Provides the main fruit flavor and the body of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as it concentrates during boiling, helps thicken and preserve it.
Red currant juice
Adds tartness that balances the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 30 minutes. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sugar and fruit, which thickens the preserve. Too short a boil leaves it runny, while a long boil can darken the color and scorch the sugar on the bottom of the pot.

“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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