Gooseberries, to Keep
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Pick fully grown, unripe gooseberries on a dry day.
Remove the tops and tails from the gooseberries.
Bottle and bake
Place them in open-mouthed bottles and gently cork them with new corks.
Put the bottles in the oven at 300°F (150°C) after removing the bread and let them stand until shrunk by a quarter.
Remove the bottles from the oven and immediately seal the corks tightly.
Seal and store
Cut off the tops and seal them with rosin.
Store in a dry place; if well sealed from air, they will keep for a year.
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 fruit being preserved; it is kept whole and shrinks slightly during the process.
- Rosin
- Seals the cork tops so air cannot reach the fruit during storage.
The step that matters
Sealing the corks immediately after removing the bottles from the oven. As the bottles cool, the air inside contracts and can draw in outside air through loose corks, spoiling the fruit. Sealing right away keeps the air-tight seal the preservation depends on.
“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.
You might also like
Tomato Soup526 recipes
Brown Bread461 recipes
Mutton Broth292 recipes
Yorkshire Pudding264 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.