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To Preserve Fruit for Tarts, or Family Desserts

Preserves fruit for tarts by boiling fruit with sugar in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,313 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

To Preserve Fruit for Tarts, or Family Desserts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather ripe cherries, plums, or American apples and place them in jars that hold 1 pound each.

  2. Sprinkle 6 ounces of pounded sugar over each jar.

  3. Cover each jar with two tied bladders.

Cook and store

  1. Place the jars in a large pot of water up to the neck and boil gently for 3 hours.

  2. Store the jars in a dry place, free from damp.

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. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe cherries, plums, or american apples
Provides the fruit, which supplies the flavor and body of the preserve.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it by drawing out moisture.

The step that matters

Boiling gently in a water bath. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil lets the fruit cook evenly and soften without breaking apart or the jars leaking. Water that is too high or too vigorous can push water into the jars and dilute the preserve.

“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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