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To Preserve Strawberries

A method for preserving strawberries by boiling them with sugar and optional red currant juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Rose and red currant work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

To Preserve Strawberries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place a large deep dish or milk pan and add the strawberries.

Make the syrup

  1. For each pound of strawberries, add 1 pound of sugar and boil until it reaches a high candy stage.

  2. Pour the syrup over the strawberries.

Cook and finish

  1. Wash out the preserving pan.

  2. Return the fruit and syrup to the pan and boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a large sieve.

  4. Boil the syrup for 20 minutes.

  5. Carefully add the strawberries back to the syrup, along with the red currant juice and an additional ½ pound of sugar if desired.

  6. Boil everything together for 10 minutes, skimming off any foam.

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

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Rose + red curranttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Rose + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and body, softening and holding their shape in the syrup.
Sugar
Draws water out of the fruit and forms a thick syrup that preserves it and adds sweetness.
Red currant juice
Adds tart, fruity acidity to the syrup, balancing the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar to a high candy stage. Sugar concentration controls how thick the syrup becomes and how well it preserves the fruit. Too little boiling leaves a thin syrup that spoils more easily, while overcooking can make it hard and bitter.

Swap the red currant

The recipe marks red currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rose, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rose, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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