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Preserve

To Preserve Strawberries the Richest Way

A method of preserving strawberries by making a syrup with sugar and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Preserve Strawberries the Richest Way

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

  1. Gather the finest scarlet strawberries on a dry day before they are too ripe.

  2. Lay the strawberries separately on a dish.

  3. Beat 1 pound of double-refined sugar and strew the beaten sugar over the strawberries.

  4. Crush a few ripe strawberries and mix them with an equal weight of double-refined sugar.

  5. Put the mixture into a jar and cover the jar tightly.

  6. Place the jar in a kettle of boiling water until the strawberries are soft and syrup forms.

Make the syrup

  1. Strain the mixture through a muslin rag into a pan.

  2. Boil the pan and skim it well.

  3. Once the pan is cold, add the whole strawberries to the syrup.

Cook and pot

  1. Warm the strawberries gently without boiling.

  2. Repeat warming until the strawberries look clear.

  3. Let the strawberries cool completely.

  4. Transfer the strawberries to jelly glasses with the stalks downwards.

  5. Fill the glasses with syrup.

  6. Cover the glasses with papers dipped in brandy and tie the papers down securely.

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 + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Scarlet strawberries
Provide the fruit that softens and becomes the preserve.
Double-refined sugar
Draws out juice and forms the syrup while preserving the fruit.

The step that matters

Warming without boiling. Boiling the strawberries breaks them apart and clouds the syrup. Gentle, repeated warming softens the fruit while keeping it 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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