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Preserve

Preserving Fruit with and Without Sugar

A method for preserving various fruits in jars using sugar and water, with or without sugar, by heating overnight.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and pineapple work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 142 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Preserving Fruit with and Without Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Prepare glass jars by placing the fruit inside: stoned cherries, picked strawberries, and gooseberries.

  2. Add a large quantity of sugar to the gooseberries.

  3. Add a little sugar to the cherries and strawberries.

  4. Do not add sugar to the currants and blueberries.

  5. Fill the jars with cold water.

Cook the jars

  1. Place the jars in two tinned copper vessels with one inch of cold water.

  2. Cover the jars loosely.

  3. Place the vessels in the oven at 200°F (93°C) to cook overnight.

  4. In the morning, fill the jars with water just off the boiling point.

  5. Seal the jars tightly.

Preserve the pineapple

  1. Peel the pineapple.

  2. Cut the pineapple into small pieces.

  3. Pack the pineapple pieces into jars without sugar.

  4. Cook the pineapple jars overnight in the same manner.

  5. Strain the juice from the skins and butts.

  6. Reheat the juice to boiling.

  7. Fill the jars with the boiled juice.

  8. Seal the 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. Currant + pineappletop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit's texture and flavour in the jars.
Cherries
Main fruit, sweetened lightly and cooked gently in the jars.
Strawberries
Main fruit, sweetened lightly and cooked gently in the jars.
Gooseberries
Tart fruit given a large amount of sugar to balance its acidity.
Pineapple
Main fruit, packed without sugar and preserved in its own boiled juice.

The step that matters

Sealing the jars tightly after the overnight cook. Fruit must be sealed while hot so a vacuum forms as it cools; a loose seal lets air in and the preserve can spoil.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sugar. 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.

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