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Dessert

Whole Strawberry Preserves

Preserves whole strawberries with sugar and red currant juice, simmered until jellied.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and red currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Whole Strawberry Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Choose the largest scarlet strawberries and weigh them.

  2. Weigh an equal amount of sugar for every pound of strawberries.

  3. Spread the strawberries on large dishes.

  4. Sprinkle half the sugar over them.

  5. Gently shake the dish to ensure the sugar contacts the underside of the fruit.

  6. The next day, make a thin syrup with the remaining sugar and mix it with the red currant juice.

Cook and pot

  1. Simmer the strawberries in the syrup until they are sufficiently jellied.

  2. Place the preserves in small glasses.

  3. Let them cool, then cover with brandied paper.

  4. Tie or paste paper over each glass to exclude air.

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 + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Scarlet strawberries
Their fruit and pectin set the preserves to a jelly as they simmer in the syrup.
Double-refined sugar
Sweetens the preserves and draws moisture from the fruit, helping it hold its shape and keep.
Red currant juice
Adds tart acidity and fruit flavour, and helps the preserves set.

The step that matters

Simmering until sufficiently jellied. Simmering too briefly leaves the preserves runny and prone to spoiling, while overcooking can toughen the fruit and darken the flavour. Watch for a gel that wrinkles when cooled on a plate.

“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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