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Gooseberry Jam
Stew the berries in a little water, press through a coarse sieve, return to the kettle, add three-fourths pound sugar to each pound of the pulped gooseberry; boil three-quarters of an hour, stirring constantly; pour in jars or bowls, and cover as directed for currant jams.
A plain nineteenth-century fruit-butter method: cook, sieve, sweeten by weight, and boil hard. The only figure that matters is the sugar ratio, and the only real judgement call is when to stop.
- Weigh the pulp, not the fruitThree-quarters pound sugar per pound applies to the sieved pulp, after the skins and seeds have been left behind. Weigh the pot of pulp on a kitchen scale before adding sugar; guessing from the original weight of berries will oversweeten it.
- "A little water"Enough to keep the fruit from catching before it releases its own juice — roughly 1/4 cup per pound of berries. Gooseberries are watery and will collapse quickly over gentle heat.
- Coarse sieveA food mill with the medium plate does this work in a minute. A conical sieve and a wooden pestle is the period equivalent; do not use a fine mesh, which clogs on the seeds.
- Three-quarters of an hour is a long boilModern jams reach setting point far sooner. Gooseberries are high in pectin and acid, and a sieved pulp at this sugar ratio will usually set in 15 to 25 minutes of hard boiling. Test at 220°F on a thermometer, or with a spoonful chilled on a saucer, rather than watching the clock.
- Stirring constantlyTake this literally. Sieved pulp with no whole fruit to hold it apart scorches readily, and the scorch flavors the whole batch. Use a wide heavy pan and a flat-ended wooden spatula that reaches the corners.
- "Cover as directed for currant jams"The covering directions live in the currant jam entry; seals of this period were typically paper or a cloth dipped in brandy laid on the surface, then a tied cover -- a period seal, not a modern one. For keeping at room temperature, process filled half-pint jars in a boiling water bath to a current tested time; otherwise refrigerate and use within a month.
- YieldTwo pounds of gooseberries give roughly 1 1/2 pounds of pulp and about three half-pint jars.
- Which gooseberriesUnderripe green fruit gives the sharpest jam and the firmest set; fully ripe red or amber berries are sweeter and slacker. The recipe's low sugar ratio assumes tart fruit.
Gooseberries were a staple of American kitchen gardens in the 1870s and 80s in a way they no longer are — they crop heavily in cool climates, they need no pollinator partner, and they arrive in early summer before most other fruit. Their near-disappearance from American markets is generally traced to the white pine blister rust quarantines of the early twentieth century, when Ribes plantings were destroyed or banned outright in many states as an alternate host of the fungus; the federal ban was lifted in the 1960s but the fruit never regained its place. Buckeye Cookery, published in 1877, treats gooseberry as unremarkably as currant — the instruction to cover the jars "as directed for currant jams" is a bookkeeping habit of the compiled community cookbook, which assumed you were reading the section straight through rather than dipping in for one dish.