It is often noticed that some fruits, like plums, taste stronger or sourer per they have been sweetened. The strong bitter or sour flavorm noticed in these fruitsm comes from cooking the fruit and sugar together for too long time. It is more noticeable in very acid fruits, than in those which are inilder, but there is some lessening of the fine sweet flavor in all cases, when fruit and sugar are cooked together too long. To have the finest flavor in sweetened fruit sauces, cook the fruit first if a hard fruit until soft, add the sugar and remove from the stove, The heat in the fruit is sufficient to thoroughly dissolve the sugar with out further cooking. Very soft fruits, like strawberries, need the sugar to be added before they are put on to cook but these fruits need only be brought to the boiling temperature to be cooked ready for use as the sauce. The sugar therefore is not cooked with them any longer than is with the hard fruits which sweetened at the last moment are on the stove.
If fruit is too juicy and must be boiled down to have a desirable consistency, boil it down to a thick paste, before adding the sugar, or drain off the juice, and boil that down, then add it and the sugar to the fruit. When too much sugar is added to the fruit and cooked for a too long time, instead of be coming jelly like it becomes dark and stringy, like partly cooked molasses.
If sweetened fruit does not jelly, has begun to turn dark,no amount cooking will make it jelly. Continued cooking will give it a worse stronger flavor. The only way to serve the natural flavor of fruit is to let the fruit and sugar cook together but a few minutes.
AMERICAN COOPERATIVE JOURNAL JUNE 1921