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To Preserve Strawberries W'hole

This recipe preserves strawberries whole using sugar and red currant juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and red currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

To Preserve Strawberries W'hole

Ingredients

Directions

Sugar the fruit

  1. Place the strawberries in a large dish and sprinkle half the sugar over them.

  2. Gently shake the dish to ensure the sugar touches the underside of the fruit.

Make the syrup

  1. The next day, make a thin syrup with the remaining sugar and the red currant juice.

Simmer

  1. Simmer the strawberries in the syrup until they are sufficiently jellied.

Choose the fruit

  1. Choose the largest strawberries that are not overripe.

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 + 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
The fruit being preserved, which keeps its shape while it softens and jellies in the syrup.
Double-refined sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out moisture, and its concentration helps the syrup set.
Red currant juice
Adds acidity and tart flavour to the syrup, balancing the sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmer until sufficiently jellied. Simmering concentrates the sugar and lets the fruit's natural pectin help the syrup thicken. Too little heat leaves the syrup thin, while overcooking breaks the strawberries down and loses their whole shape.

“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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