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Currant Jam
Pick from stems and wash thoroughly with the hands, put into a preserving kettle and boil fifteen or twenty minutes, stirring often, and skimming off any scum that may arise; then add sugar in the proportion of three-fourths pound sugar to one pound fruit, or, by measure, one coffee-cup of sugar to one pint mashed fruit; boil thirty minutes longer, stirring almost constantly. When done, pour in small jars or glasses, and either seal or secure like jelly, by first pressing paper, cut to fit the glasses, down close on the fruit, and then larger papers, brushed on the inside with white of eggs, with the edges turned down over the outside of the glass.
A plain, high-yield jam that relies on the currant's own pectin and acid rather than added setting agents. Two things need translating: the vessel and the sealing method.
- The hinge: stop at the set, not the clockForty-five to fifty minutes of total boiling will overcook a modern batch into something stiff and caramelised. Boil the fruit until it breaks down, add the sugar, and then cook only until the jam reaches 220F (about 8 Fahrenheit degrees above the boiling point of water where you live) or sheets from a cold spoon. That is usually 10 to 20 minutes, not thirty.
- Preserving kettleA wide, heavy, non-reactive pan — stainless steel or enamelled cast iron. Width matters more than depth, since evaporation is what concentrates the jam. Avoid bare copper or aluminium with fruit this acidic.
- Coffee-cupA 19th-century coffee-cup is not a standardised measure; treat it as roughly a modern 8-ounce cup. The weight ratio given alongside it — three-quarters pound sugar to one pound fruit — is the more reliable of the two and is what to work from.
- That sugar ratioModern jam recipes often run closer to equal weights. Three-quarters sugar to fruit sets well with currants because they are unusually high in both pectin and acid, but it also means a jam with less preservative sugar than a full-sugar batch, which matters for storage.
- SealingPaper discs and egg-white-glued paper covers were a mould barrier, not a seal, and they assume a cold cellar and quick use. Fill hot into sterilised jars and either refrigerate, or process half-pints in a boiling-water bath according to current preserving guidance for high-acid fruit.
- SkimmingThe scum is foam and fruit protein, not spoilage. Skim it for a clear jam; a small knob of butter added at the start reduces how much forms.
- Sourcing currantsRed or white currants both work; black currants are stronger in flavour and period books often give them their own recipes. Fresh currants are seasonal and regional in North America — frozen ones are fine here, since the fruit is cooked to a pulp anyway.
- YieldFour pounds of currants with three pounds of sugar fills something like seven or eight half-pint jars, depending on how far the jam is boiled down.
Buckeye Cookery came out of 1870s Ohio, from a network of churchwomen collecting the practical knowledge of households that grew much of what they ate, and currants were a fixture of the American kitchen garden of that era, cooking down and setting into jelly or jam without any purchased pectin, which would not be sold commercially for another thirty-five years or so. The book's jellies-and-jams section reflects a summer economy in which a bush's whole crop had to be dealt with in a few days and then made to last the winter, hence the paper-and-egg-white covers, a cheap and once-universal way of keeping mould off a jar in a cool cellar. Currants themselves later became scarce in much of the United States: Ribes species host white pine blister rust, and in the early twentieth century federal and state programmes discouraged and in places prohibited their cultivation, which is a large part of why a fruit this common in 1877 is unfamiliar to many American cooks now.