Name: Red Gooseberry Jam
Ingredients: 6 pounds small ripe red gooseberries; 2½ pounds roughly powdered sugar (or 3 pounds fine Lisbon sugar for a common preserve)

Red Gooseberry Jam

Ingredients

6 pounds small ripe red gooseberries
2½ pounds roughly powdered sugar (or 3 pounds fine Lisbon sugar for a common preserve)

Directions

Prepare

Remove the buds and stalks from the gooseberries.

Cook the jam

Weigh the prepared gooseberries and boil them quickly for 45 minutes, stirring well.
Add the sugar to the boiling gooseberries and boil briskly for 20 to 25 minutes, stirring from the bottom to prevent burning.

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries: Provide the fruit body and natural pectin and acidity that help the jam thicken and set.
Sugar: Adds sweetness, helps the jam set, and preserves it by binding water.

The step that matters

Stirring from the bottom while boiling with sugar. Sugar sinks to the bottom of the pan and scorches quickly under a hard boil. Stirring from the base keeps it dissolved and prevents burnt flavour and sticking.

“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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Red Gooseberry Jam