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Strawberry Preserves
Put two pounds of sugar in a bright tin-pan over a kettle of boiling water, and pour into it half a pint of boiling water; when the sugar is dissolved and hot, put in fruit, and then place the pan directly on the stove or range; let boil ten minutes or longer if the fruit is not clear, gently (or the berries will be broken) take up with a small strainer, and keep hot while the syrup is boiled down until thick and rich; drain off the thin syrup from the cans, and pour the rich syrup over the berries to fill, and screw down the tops immediately. The thin syrup poured off may be brought to boiling, and then bottled and sealed, to be used for sauces and drinks.
This is a whole-berry preserve built on the same principle a good jam maker uses now: cook the fruit briefly so it stays intact, then reduce the syrup separately. The method is sound; only the sealing is out of date.
- The hinge: cook the fruit fast, the syrup slowThe berries get about ten minutes, or longer if the recipe's own test ("if the fruit is not clear") calls for it, and the short cooking is what keeps them whole rather than reducing them to jam. Lift them out with a small strainer, then boil the syrup down on its own until thick -- around 220F if you want a modern gauge -- and reunite them in the jar.
- Do not seal by the old open-kettle methodScrewing down the lids on hot preserves and letting them cool was standard practice in 1877 but is no longer considered a reliable seal; mould and yeast spoilage are the usual results. Fill clean hot half-pint jars, leave 1/4 inch headspace, and process in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes.
- Amount of fruitThe recipe never says. Roughly equal weights of sugar and fruit were common in preserves of this kind, so two pounds of hulled strawberries (about a quart and a half) is a reasonable reading; the high proportion of sugar is what preserves the fruit here.
- Half a pint of waterOne cup. A gill, if you meet the word elsewhere in this book, is half a cup.
- "A bright tin-pan over a kettle of boiling water"An improvised double boiler, used so the sugar dissolves without scorching before the fruit goes in. Any heatproof bowl over simmering water does the same; a heavy stainless or enamelled pan on low heat is quicker. "Bright" meant untarnished tin, which would not discolour the fruit.
- "Cans"Almost certainly glass jars with screw tops of the kind zinc caps fitted, which is why the syrup can be drained back off them and topped up. Modern two-piece lids work the same way, but do not reuse flats.
- The thin syrupWorth saving, as the book says, but bottle it and keep it in the refrigerator rather than treating it as shelf-stable. It is dilute and will ferment. Good over pancakes or stirred into soda water.
- YieldDepends on how much fruit you use and how much thin syrup you draw off; with two pounds of berries, expect roughly four half-pint jars.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, first issued in Ohio in the 1870s and reprinted heavily through the 1880s, belongs to the first generation of American cookbooks written for households that could buy cheap refined sugar and standardised glass jars. Both mattered here: the Mason jar patent of 1858 put a reusable screw-top vessel in ordinary kitchens, and falling sugar prices made a pound-for-pound preserve a reasonable thing for a farm family to attempt with a June strawberry glut. The distinction between a preserve and a jam was taken seriously in this period, a preserve being fruit kept whole and suspended in syrup. The instruction to save the drained-off thin syrup for "sauces and drinks" is characteristic of the book's temper throughout, where little that cost sugar was allowed to go down the drain.