Put two pounds of strawberries at the bottom of a preserving-pan, pour over two breakfast cupfuls of red or white currant juice, cover with finely-crushed loaf sugar and again with a sheet of paper, place the pan at the side of the fire and let it remain until the strawberries are slightly warm. Remove the pan from the fire, take the strawberries out carefully with a wooden spoon and put them on a sieve to drain. Add a little more sugar to the syrup, boil it to the pearl degree (see Sugar Boiling), put back the fruit and let it simmer gently for a few minutes. Remove the strawberries, put them carefully into a basin, pour over the syrup and let them remain for a couple of days. Take them out again, drain, put the syrup back in the pan, add a little more sugar and a small quantity of currant juice and boil again to the pearl degree, put in the strawberries, simmer for a few minutes, put them carefully into jars, pour the syrup in so as to not quite fill the jars, let them get cold, cover over first with paper soaked in brandy, then with thick paper or a bladder, put the jars in a cool place and let them remain until wanted. For preserving strawberries only the largest fruit should be used.

Strawberry Shrub

Hull twelve pounds of ripe strawberries, crush and mash them and squeeze the juice from them through a cloth. Put the juice in a pan over the fire together with the strained juice of half a dozen good-sized lemons, bring it to the boil and let it boil fast for five minutes; then add six pounds of loaf sugar and when this has melted let it boil for six minutes longer. Remove it from the fire, let it cool, skimming as it cools, and when quite cold mix in one and one-half pints of brandy or whiskey. Bottle it being very particular to see that the bottles are perfectly clean. They should first be well washed in soda and water and then rinsed out with boiling water. Cork the bottles with new corks soaked in cold water. Cut them off even with the top, seal with sealing-wax or bees-wax and rosin melted together in equal quantities, and lay the bottles on their sides in dry sawdust.