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Dessert

Dried Gooseberries

A preserved fruit made by simmering gooseberries with sugar, then drying and optionally coating with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Dried Gooseberries

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Place 5 pounds of gooseberries in a stewpan and sprinkle with 1 pound of sugar.

  2. Set the stewpan on low heat until the syrup begins to form.

  3. Remove the stewpan from heat.

Dry and store

  1. Scald the gooseberries in the syrup for 2 or 3 days.

  2. Remove the gooseberries from the syrup.

  3. Place the gooseberries on a sieve to dry.

  4. Optionally dip the dried gooseberries in powdered white sugar to candy them.

  5. Store the dried gooseberries in a tin box with paper between layers.

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries
Provide the fruit that dries into the chewy, tart main product.
Sugar
Draws moisture out of the fruit and sweetens it as it preserves.

The step that matters

Scalding the gooseberries in the syrup over 2 or 3 days. Sugar syrup slowly draws water out of the fruit through osmosis. Heating too hard or stopping early can leave the fruit soft, fermenting, or unevenly dried, so the syrup should stay gentle and the fruit should be soaked for the full period.

“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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