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Dessert

Gooseberries

A preserve made by scalding gooseberries, clarifying sugar syrup, and cooling the berries before placing them in a pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Gooseberries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pick the black eye off the gooseberries, leaving the stalk.

  2. Scald the gooseberries in a pot of water without boiling them.

  3. Once tender, transfer them to cold water.

Make the syrup and fill the pan

  1. In a separate pot, combine the sugar and water to clarify the sugar.

  2. Once the syrup is cold, place the gooseberries singly into the preserving pan.

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries
Provide the main fruit, holding their shape when gently scalded and preserved in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved in syrup, helps preserve it by drawing out water.

The step that matters

Scalding the gooseberries without boiling them. Gentle heat softens the fruit while keeping the skins intact. Boiling can split the skins and turn the gooseberries mushy, so they lose their shape in the syrup.

“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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