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Dessert

Perfection Preserves

A preserve made from strawberries and sugar, cooked slowly until the sugar melts and the mixture boils hard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Perfection Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Stem and rinse the strawberries.

  2. Place them in a preserving kettle.

  3. Cover with 1 cup of sugar for every cup of fruit.

Cook the preserves

  1. Set the kettle on the back of the stove to heat slowly until the sugar melts.

  2. Move the kettle to a boil and let it boil hard for 8 to 9 minutes without stirring.

Seal

  1. Seal the preserves hot.

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

Strawberries
Provide the fruit, flavor and body that the cooked preserves are built from.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, helps preserve it and thicken the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil hard for 8 to 9 minutes without stirring. A hard, sustained boil evaporates water and concentrates the sugar so the syrup reaches the level needed to set and keep well. Boiling too briefly leaves the preserves runny and more prone to spoiling. Stirring during the boil can scorch the sugar and break up the fruit.

“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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