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Preserved Strawberries

A method for preserving strawberries by sugar and optional apple jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Preserved Strawberries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

  1. Gather strawberries in dry weather, leaving their stalks on.

  2. Lay the strawberries separately on a dish.

  3. Sift 4 pounds of sugar over the strawberries.

  4. Bruise a few overripe strawberries. Mix the bruised strawberries with an equal weight of sugar in a bowl. Cover the bowl.

Make the syrup

  1. Place the bowl in a pot of boiling water until the juice thickens.

  2. Strain the juice through muslin into a preserving pan.

  3. Boil the juice.

  4. Skim the surface of the juice.

  5. Let the juice cool.

Preserve and jar

  1. Add the whole strawberries to the syrup.

  2. Warm the strawberries gently without boiling.

  3. Remove from heat to cool.

  4. Repeat warming until the strawberries are clear.

  5. Once cooled, transfer the strawberries to jars or glasses.

  6. Pour a little apple jelly over the strawberries if desired.

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 + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Strawberries
Provide the fruit and flavour that the preserve is built around.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out its juice, helping preserve it.
Apple jelly
Optional addition that adds extra set and helps the preserve keep longer.

The step that matters

Warm the strawberries gently without boiling. Boiling breaks down the fruit and toughens or splits the berries. Gentle repeated warming lets sugar slowly replace water in the fruit, keeping them whole and clear.

“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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