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To Preserve Strawberries W'holf

Preserved strawberries made by layering fruit with sugar, simmering in a syrup of sugar and red currant juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

To Preserve Strawberries W'holf

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate

  1. Layer strawberries in a large dish and sprinkle half the sugar over them.

  2. Gently shake the dish to ensure the sugar touches the underside of the fruit.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. The next day, make a thin syrup with the remaining sugar and red currant juice.

  2. Simmer the strawberries in the syrup until they are sufficiently jellied.

Choose and serve

  1. Choose the largest strawberries that are not overripe.

  2. Serve the preserved strawberries in thin cream in glasses.

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
Form the bulk of the preserve and hold their shape while they soften in the syrup.
Sugar
Draws moisture out of the fruit and helps preserve it, adding sweetness.
Red currant juice
Adds tart acidity and flavour to the syrup, balancing the sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmering until jellied. Simmering must be long enough for the sugar and fruit to set into a jelly, but not so long that the strawberries break down and lose their shape. Watching the syrup's thickness is the main guide.

“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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