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Preserve

To Preserve Fruit for Future Use

A method for preserving ripe currants and raspberries by bottling, corking, and sealing with resin or oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

To Preserve Fruit for Future Use

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corks

  1. Scald the corks, let them cool, then drain and scald again with clean water.

  2. Dry the corks in a sieve for two days.

Bottle the fruit

  1. Use 6 oz. of sugar for plums or similar fruits, but avoid excess sugar to maintain flavor.

  2. Bottle ripe currants and raspberries together.

  3. Optionally, pour melted fat on the fruit before corking to seal it.

  4. Ensure the water covers the fruit when bottles are laid on their sides.

  5. Alternatively, pour olive oil on the water to prevent air access, storing bottles upright.

Cork and seal

  1. Cork the bottles while resting them on double flannel dipped in hot water to prevent breakage.

  2. When corking, squeeze the cork to fit, drive it down one inch, and cut it even with the bottle's mouth.

  3. Fasten corks with wire or twine, then dip the tops in melted resin twice, once when hot and again when cold.

Use the fruit

  1. When using the fruit, pour off excess water if no sugar was added, and add sugar as needed.

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. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  2. Currant + olivetop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together113 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Sugar + olivetop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve flavor when used in the right amount.
Ripe currants
The main fruit, preserved whole in the bottles.
Ripe raspberries
The main fruit, preserved whole in the bottles alongside the currants.
Melted resin
Sealed over the cork tops to close the bottles against air.

The step that matters

Cork the bottles. Hot bottles resting on flannel soaked in hot water reduce the risk of cracking from sudden temperature change. Corks pressed to fit and cut flush keep air out, which is what protects the fruit from spoilage.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, olive):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, olive. 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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