The Science of Macerating Berries

Many recipes call for macerating fruit before incorporating it into a dish. Like salting watery produce such as cabbage, eggplant, or zucchini, tossing fruit with sugar and leaving it to sit draws out moisture that might otherwise lead to soupy fillings with bloated (or blown-out) produce. Like salt, sugar pulls water out of cells through osmosis: It creates a higher concentration of dissolved molecules at the surface of the fruit, which in turn causes water from inside the fruit’s cell walls to be drawn out, since water has a tendency to move from a more dilute solution to a more concentrated one. The speed at which water is drawn out depends on the number of ions or molecules present.