To Keep Gooseberries
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Gather gooseberries before they become too large, taking care not to cut the stalks and buds.
Fill wide-mouthed bottles with the gooseberries and loosely cork them.
Submerge the bottles in boiling water until the fruit looks scalded.
Remove the bottles from the boiling water and let them cool.
Seal and bury
Cork the bottles tightly and seal the tops with rosin.
Dig a trench in a dry part of the garden deep enough to bury the bottles by 18 inches.
Cover the bottles with earth and add fresh stable litter during frost to prevent hardening.
Alum water and storage
Scald the gooseberries, then fill the bottles with cold alum water.
Store the bottles 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 fruit being preserved; its flesh and skin are what the scalding and sealing protect.
- Roach alum
- Alum water firms the fruit's texture during storage.
The step that matters
Scalding the gooseberries. Heat softens the fruit's tissue and inactivates enzymes and microbes that cause spoilage. Scalding must stop once the fruit looks scalded, because longer heating cooks the berries and breaks down their structure.
“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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