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Dessert

Gooseberries, to Keep

This recipe preserves gooseberries by blanching them in a roche-alum solution.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Gooseberries, to Keep

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the alum bath

  1. Dissolve the roche-alum in a pan of boiling hard water.

  2. Pick the gooseberries and place a few in a hair sieve.

Blanch and dry

  1. Hold the sieve in the boiling water until the gooseberries turn white.

  2. Remove the sieve and spread the gooseberries between two clean cloths.

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; its firmness and skin are what the treatment changes.
Roche-alum
Firms the fruit's pectin and cell walls, helping it keep its shape and texture.

The step that matters

Holding the sieve in the boiling water until the gooseberries turn white. Heat softens fruit quickly, so the gooseberries can split or go mushy if left too long. The alum firms the flesh, but only a brief dip keeps them whole and firm.

“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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