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Dessert

Bottled Gooseberries

Preserved gooseberries boiled with hay and sealed in bottles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Bottled Gooseberries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather gooseberries on a dry day and top and tail them.

  2. Place the gooseberries in bottles.

Cook and seal

  1. Put the bottles in a large kettle and add a little hay.

  2. Fill the kettle with water and place it over the stove to boil.

  3. When the gooseberries change color throughout, remove them and set aside until the next day.

  4. Top up the bottles with any remaining gooseberries as they may shrink.

  5. Cork the bottles tightly and seal them.

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
The fruit being preserved, packed whole into the bottles and heated until cooked through.

The step that matters

Heating until the gooseberries change color throughout. Heat must penetrate the whole fruit, not just its surface, for the gooseberries to cook evenly. Stopping early leaves the centre underprocessed, which weakens the preserve's keeping quality.

“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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