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Spiced Jam
A nice relish for cold meats is as follows: Take five pounds of gooseberries, or other acid fruit, three pounds of sugar, well-cooked. Add a teaspoonful of salt, one of pepper, one of cloves, one of cinnamon, one of allspice and a little mace, if you like it; cook as above.
A sweet-sour spiced preserve meant as a condiment rather than a breakfast jam. The instructions lean on the recipe printed above it in the original book, so a few decisions are left to the cook.
- "Cook as above"The phrase refers back to a jam method printed earlier in the original book, which is not reproduced here. Treat it as an open-kettle jam: crush the fruit, add sugar, and boil steadily, stirring, until it sheets from the spoon or reaches 220F by modern practice.
- Sugar ratioThree pounds of sugar to five of fruit is low for a preserve, closer to 60 percent fruit by weight. Gooseberries are high in both acid and pectin so it will still set, but expect a longer boil and a softer, more relish-like consistency than a modern equal-weights jam.
- GooseberriesFresh green gooseberries are seasonal and scarce in most markets. Red currants, tart plums, damsons, sour cherries, rhubarb or firm cooking apples all stand in; the point is high acid, since the spice and salt need something sharp to sit against.
- SpicesA teaspoonful each of pepper, cloves, cinnamon and allspice reads as ground spice. Whole cloves and allspice berries in a muslin bag give a cleaner flavour and can be pulled before jarring. Add the spices in the last ten minutes so they do not turn dusty and bitter.
- Salt and pepperThese are not errors. The teaspoon of salt and teaspoon of pepper are what make this a relish for cold beef, ham or tongue rather than a spread for toast. Black pepper is the sensible reading.
- StorageThe recipe says nothing about jars or sealing. For anything kept in the cupboard, follow current water-bath canning times for jam in your jar size; otherwise cool it, cover, and keep it refrigerated, where it will hold for a month or more.
- YieldFive pounds of fruit and three of sugar cooks down to roughly four to five pints. Small jars are more useful than large ones, since a spiced relish is served by the spoonful.
Spiced fruit preserves of this kind sat squarely in the Victorian and Edwardian cold-meat tradition, where a sideboard of sliced ham, tongue and roast beef was expected to be accompanied by something sharp. The pattern owes a good deal to the chutneys and spiced pickles that came back to British and American kitchens through the Indian trade, and it shades into what a later generation would call conserve, chutney or pickled fruit depending on how much vinegar was in it. Gooseberries were the obvious base in the period because they were widely grown in kitchen gardens and ripened early, and the tarter sorts were destined for the preserving kettle rather than the dessert table. The household economy of the time treated the autumn stockpile and the daily relish tray as one continuous project.