Preserve Gooseberries Whole
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Pick off the black eye from the gooseberries, leaving the stalks intact.
Scald the gooseberries in a pot of water over low heat until tender.
Shake the gooseberries in cold water.
Make the syrup
Clarify the sugar with 1 pint of water for every pound of sugar.
Once the syrup is cold, place the gooseberries in a preserving pan and cover them with syrup.
Heat gently, allowing them to boil without breaking, until the sugar has absorbed.
Cover with white paper and let sit overnight.
Remove the gooseberries from the syrup.
Boil the syrup until it thickens.
Skim the syrup.
Return the syrup to the gooseberries.
Simmer gently until it ropes.
Let cool.
Store
Cover with paper and store in a dry place.
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 main fruit; scalding softens them so they absorb the syrup while holding their shape.
- Double refined sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and, once concentrated in the syrup, helps preserve it.
The step that matters
Heat gently so the gooseberries do not boil apart. Vigorous boiling bursts the skins and breaks the fruit down. Gentle heat lets sugar slowly move into the fruit while the berries keep their shape.
“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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