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Strawberry Preserves

A sweet fruit preserve made by boiling strawberries with sugar and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Make the preserves

  1. Combine strawberries and sugar in a large pot.

  2. Bring to a rolling boil and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Add lemon juice and continue boiling for 3 to 4 minutes.

  4. Skim off any foam and set aside to cool and thicken overnight.

Can and seal

  1. Can in sterilized jars and seal while cold.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Strawberries
Provide the fruit flavour and the bulk of the preserves.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, with the boil, helps the preserves thicken and keep.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps the pectin set.

The step that matters

Boiling with lemon juice. Once the lemon juice goes in, the mixture must reach and hold a full rolling boil for the stated time. Strawberries are low in natural pectin, so a proper boil with enough sugar and acid is what lets the preserves gel and keep safely.

“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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