Green Gooseberries
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Select the largest gooseberries for preserving.
Place the gooseberries and sugar in an earthen vessel and cover it closely.
Set the vessel in a pan of water on the fire until the syrup separates from the fruit.
Make the syrup
When cool, pour off the syrup and boil it.
Pour the hot syrup over the fruit.
The next day, boil all together gently for about 20 minutes.
Remove the gooseberries and place them in small jars.
Boil the syrup for an additional 15 minutes and pour it over the fruit.
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; its skin and flesh hold shape and release juice into the syrup as it cooks.
- Loaf sugar
- Draws juice out of the fruit and, once dissolved, forms the syrup that preserves it through sweetness.
The step that matters
Setting the vessel in a pan of water on the fire until the syrup separates from the fruit. Heating gently in a water bath draws syrup out of the fruit without boiling it apart. Too much heat can break the gooseberries down before the syrup has formed.
“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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