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To Preserve Fruit for Tarts

A method of preserving gooseberries and damsons for tarts using sugar, brandy paper, and mutton suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and raspberry work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 235 recipes. Both carry (z)-hex-3-en-1-ol, which smells freshly cut grass green and herbaceous notes. The science ↓

To Preserve Fruit for Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gooseberry jam

  1. Boil gooseberries with lump sugar to make a thin jam.

  2. When the jam is cold, cover it with brandy paper.

  3. Cover the jam with melted mutton suet.

Preserve the damsons

  1. For damsons, scald them in water for 1 minute.

  2. Sprinkle the damsons with pounded lump sugar.

  3. The next day, pour off the syrup.

  4. Boil the syrup and skim it.

  5. Pour the syrup over the damsons.

  6. Let the damsons stand for 1-2 days.

  7. Boil the syrup again.

  8. Add the damsons to the syrup for a few minutes without mashing.

  9. Transfer the preserved fruit to jars.

  10. Let the jars cool.

  11. Cover the jars with brandy paper.

  12. Pour melted mutton suet over the fruit in the jars.

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. Brandy + raspberrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-hex-3-en-1-ol (freshly cut grass green and herbaceous notes).

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

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

  3. Sugar + raspberrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,101 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Brandy + muttontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together90 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanol (green, grassy).

  5. Mutton + raspberrytop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 fruit and pectin that set the thin jam.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it by drawing out water.
Damsons
Supply the fruit that is preserved in sugar syrup.
Mutton suet
Forms a sealed fat layer that keeps air away from the preserve.

The step that matters

Add the damsons to the syrup without mashing. Brief simmering in hot syrup firms the fruit so it keeps its shape. Stirring or mashing breaks the skins and cell walls, turning the fruit to mush.

Swap the raspberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy, mutton):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Currantfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, mutton. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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