Why it works: Sugar and red currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
To Preserve Strawberries Whole
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Select the largest scarlet strawberries that are not too ripe.
Weigh the strawberries and measure out the same weight of pounded sugar.
Place the strawberries on a large dish and sprinkle half of the sugar over them.
Make the syrup and cook
The next day, prepare a syrup by boiling the remaining sugar with the red currant juice.
Simmer the strawberries in the syrup until they jelly to the side of the pan.
Carefully remove the strawberries and place them into pots or glasses.
Seal
Seal the pots with brandy paper.
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.
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Sugar + red curranttop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,156 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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 is preserved and set into a firm, jelly-like mass.
- Pounded lump sugar
- Draws moisture out of the fruit and preserves it while adding sweetness.
- Red currant juice
- Adds acidity and flavour to the syrup in which the strawberries cook.
The step that matters
Simmer the strawberries in the syrup. Simmering must be gentle and stop once the fruit jellies to the side of the pan. Overcooking breaks the strawberries down and hardens the set, while undercooking leaves the syrup too thin to preserve the fruit.
“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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