Skip to main content
Dessert

Dessert Ginger

A preserved ginger sweet made by boiling ginger in water and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Dessert Ginger

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ginger

  1. Choose fresh ginger pieces free from marks and wash them well in water.

  2. Scrape the ginger and place the pieces in a large vessel of cold water.

  3. Drain and rinse the ginger in cold water.

  4. Cut the ginger into slanting and straight pieces.

  5. Put the ginger into a large enamel pan and cover it with water.

  6. Let the ginger stand in water for 24 hours.

  7. The next day, strain the ginger.

  8. Cover the ginger again with cold water.

  9. Bring the water to a boil over moderate heat.

  10. Strain the ginger again.

  11. Cover with cold water and boil.

  12. Repeat this process six times, boiling for half an hour in the last water.

  13. Pour the ginger into a colander and rinse with plenty of cold water.

  14. Drain the ginger well and return it to the saucepan.

Make the preserve

  1. Add 2 catties of brown sugar.

  2. Simmer over low heat for 45 minutes, stirring frequently without covering.

  3. The next day, boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

Bottle

  1. Ensure the bottles are perfectly dry; if unsure, warm them in an oven with the door open before filling.

  2. Fill small bottles with the preserve using a soup ladle.

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. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Fresh ginger
Forms the preserve's main body and its characteristic pungent flavour.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it cooks down, thickens it into a syrup-coated preserve.

The step that matters

Repeated soaking and boiling of the ginger. Changing the water through repeated soaking and boiling draws out the harsh, fiery bite of the ginger, so the preserve tastes mellow rather than sharp.

“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.

More ginger preserve recipes

Apple 11

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesSoft Ginger CakeSoft Ginger Cake56 recipes