To Can Gooseberries Without Breaking Them
Ingredients
Directions
Pack and heat
Fill the cans with gooseberries and partially cover with water.
Set the jars into a vessel of water and raise the temperature to boiling point.
Boil for eight minutes, then remove from the kettle.
Seal
Cover with boiling water and seal immediately.
Optional sugar syrup
If using sugar, make a syrup with eight ounces of sugar per quart of berries and use it instead of water.
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
- Make up the fruit being preserved; their firm flesh holds its shape through the heating.
- Pure white sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and adds flavour to the syrup that replaces the water.
The step that matters
Seal immediately after covering with boiling water. Sealing while the contents are still hot lets them cool and contract, creating a partial vacuum that helps keep air and spoilage microbes out of the jar. Waiting lets the seal form less reliably.
“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.
You might also like
Vegetable Soup350 recipes
Raspberry Vinegar214 recipes
Brown Coffee with Egg175 recipes
Blackberry Cordial129 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.