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Dessert

To Preserve Gooseberries

Preserves gooseberries by boiling them with sugar and water until syrup thickens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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To Preserve Gooseberries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Take the rough‑skinned gooseberries when they are quite dry.

  2. Layer the fruit and sugar in a pan, using more sugar than the weight of the fruit.

Cook and jar

  1. Add 1 cup of water and boil the fruit quickly until it is clear.

  2. Remove the fruit and place it into jars.

  3. Boil the syrup until it thickens.

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

Rough-skinned gooseberries
Provide the fruit, with tart flavour and flesh that holds its shape when cooked.
Sugar
Draws water out of the fruit and preserves it, while adding sweetness and thickening the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the fruit quickly until clear. Sugar slowly penetrates the fruit and the syrup concentrates as it boils. A quick boil keeps the gooseberries whole and clear. Boiling too long breaks the skins and turns the fruit mushy.

“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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