Preserved Whole Fruits

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets

By Darra Goldstein

Published 2015

  • About
There are many ways to preserve whole fruits, usually in syrups. The syrup may be made with sugar, honey, or a mixture of the two; flavored with spices or fragrant oils; or enhanced with alcohol. It might be a heavy, cooked syrup, or a simple one made through the action of the fruit leaching its juices slowly into sugar.
Victorian-era food manufacturers often advertised their products alongside images of plump, happy toddlers to signify the new industrial age of safety and plenty, as in this advertising card for Thurbers’ Fruit Preserves and Jellies, produced sometime between 1850 and 1900.
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