Why do most recipes for cooked fruit include sugar in the recipe?
Cooking fruit in a sugar syrup helps maintain the shape and keep the flesh firm. When cooked with a sweet syrup, the water in the fruit is drawn to the more dense syrup. With the cells of the fruit slightly dehydrated, sugar is then absorbed into the fruit, making it firm. Sugar also interferes with the softening of pectin. Pectin keeps the cell walls of the fruit together and if weakened, the fruit becomes soft and limp.
