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To Bottle Gooseberries or Damsons

A method of preserving gooseberries or damsons in bottles with wine, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

To Bottle Gooseberries or Damsons

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fill wide-mouthed bottles with gooseberries or damsons, shaking them down to fit as many as possible.

  2. Add ½ cup of homemade wine to each bottle.

Cook and cool

  1. Tie the bottles with bladders and place them in a large pot or boiler filled with cold water up to the necks of the bottles.

  2. Bring the water to a boil.

  3. When the bladders puff up, prick them.

  4. Once boiling, remove the heat and let the bottles cool in the water.

Finish and seal

  1. The next day, remove the bladders, add a thick layer of powdered sugar on top, and a tablespoon of brandy.

  2. Cork the bottles tightly and seal them.

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. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

  3. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 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

Gooseberries
Provide the main fruit, whose firm flesh and tartness hold shape and flavor during bottling.
Homemade wine
Adds aroma and flavor and moisture to the fruit inside the sealed bottle.
Powdered loaf sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tart fruit and helps preserve it.
Brandy
Adds alcohol that helps preserve the fruit and contributes a warm aroma.

The step that matters

Heating the bottles without boiling them dry. The bottles must stay submerged up to their necks while the water heats. Gentle, sustained heat drives air out of the fruit and helps seal the bottles, and removing the heat once boiling lets them cool slowly, reducing the risk of cracking the glass.

“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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