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To Preserve Strawberries the Richest Way

A method for preserving strawberries by layering them with sugar, boiling, and sealing with brandy-dipped papers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Preserve Strawberries the Richest Way

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

  1. Gather the finest scarlet strawberries on a dry day before they are too ripe.

  2. Lay the strawberries separately on a dish.

  3. Beat and sift the sugar.

  4. Strew the sifted sugar over the strawberries.

  5. Crush a few ripe strawberries.

  6. Place the crushed strawberries in a jar with an equal weight of sugar.

  7. Cover the jar.

  8. Place the jar in a kettle of boiling water until the strawberries are soft and syrup forms.

  9. Strain the mixture through a muslin rag into a pan.

  10. Boil and skim the pan well.

  11. Let the syrup cool completely.

Cook in syrup

  1. Add the whole strawberries to the cooled syrup.

  2. Warm the strawberries until the syrup is milk warm.

  3. Remove from heat and let them cool completely.

  4. Repeat warming and cooling several times until the strawberries look clear, but do not boil them.

Pot and seal

  1. Place the strawberries in jelly glasses with the stalks downwards.

  2. Fill the glasses with syrup.

  3. Cover the glasses with papers dipped in brandy.

  4. Tie the papers down securely.

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 + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Scarlet strawberries
Provide the fruit, whose flesh holds shape and flavour through the sugar preserving.
Double-refined sugar
Draws water out of the fruit and forms the syrup that preserves it.

The step that matters

Repeat warming and cooling without boiling. Boiling breaks down the strawberries and makes them soft and cloudy. Gentle warming and cooling in syrup lets sugar slowly replace the water in the fruit, keeping it firm and clear.

“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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