Bottled Fruit

Cooked bottled fruit. In his 1810 guide to preserving fruits, Nicolas Appert suggests simply cleaning fruit, adding it to a glass container, sealing the jar, and following the Appert process of boiling the jar until the fruit is cooked. Since the fruit is softened by cooking during this process, he suggests using slightly underripe but highly flavored fruits from the middle of the season; for some, such as strawberries, he recommends the addition of sugar to bring out their flavor and aroma.

Raw bottled fruit may be kept in sugar without cooking, though for a much shorter period than the cooked version. Rysteribs, shaken red currants, are a Danish technique for keeping fruit for a week or so to be eaten as a dessert or as an accompaniment to savory dishes. Cleaned currants are put into a jar with two-thirds their weight in sugar, kept in the fridge, and shaken periodically. In Sweden, rårörd lingonsylt is a raw-stirred lingonberry jam that keeps the fresh flavor of the berries intact.