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Dessert

Fruit Syrup

A sweet liquid made by steeping fruit in tartaric acid and water, then adding sugar and optionally gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Fruit Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the first batch

  1. Dissolve 24 oz. of tartaric acid in 1 quart of water.

  2. Pour the mixture over 5 lbs. of fruit.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Add 13 lb. of sugar for each pint of juice.

  6. Let the syrup stand for another 24 hours, stirring occasionally.

  7. Bottle the syrup and seal the corks.

Make the second batch

  1. For the leftover fruit, add 2 quarts of boiling water and 2 oz. of tartaric acid.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Add 14 lb. of sugar for each pint of juice.

  5. Let the syrup stand for 24 hours.

  6. Bottle it and use within six months.

Make jelly

  1. To make jelly, soften 1 oz. of gelatin in ½ pint of water.

  2. Dissolve the gelatin with 4 pint of boiling water.

  3. When cooling, stir in 1 pint of fruit syrup.

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. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fruit
Provides the flavour and juice that become the syrup.
Tartaric acid
Adds sourness and sharpness that balances the sugar in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve it.
Gelatine
Sets the jelly so it firms as it cools.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar to the strained juice. Sugar must be fully dissolved in the juice and the syrup allowed to stand, since undissolved sugar or uneven mixing leaves a grainy, unevenly sweet syrup that spoils more readily.

“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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