To Dry Ripe Gooseberries with Sugar
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the gooseberries
Cut the tops off the gooseberries, leaving the stalks intact.
Remove the seeds as directed for unripe gooseberries.
Make and use the syrup
Boil the gooseberries in a syrup made with sugar and water until clear and tender, about 8 to 12 minutes.
Place the gooseberries in cold syrup that has been used for other fruits.
Gradually heat the mixture to boiling for a few minutes.
Let the gooseberries sit in the syrup for a couple of days.
On the third day, drain the syrup.
Simmer and skim the syrup.
Pour the syrup over the gooseberries immediately.
After 48 hours, drain the gooseberries.
Dry and finish
Lay the gooseberries out on plates or dishes.
Place them in a gentle oven to dry.
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 itself; it becomes tender and then dries into a chewy, concentrated piece.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and, in the syrup, draws out moisture while helping preserve it.
- Water
- Dissolves the sugar to form the syrup that the fruit absorbs.
The step that matters
Gradually heat the mixture to boiling. Heating the fruit in syrup slowly lets sugar penetrate the gooseberries gradually, so they stay whole and do not burst or collapse.
“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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