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UNFERMENTED WINE FOR COMMUNION
Weigh the grapes, pick from the stems, put in a porcelain kettle, add very little water, and cook till stones and pulp separate; press and strain through a thick cloth, return juice to kettle, and add three pounds sugar to every ten pounds grapes; heat to simmering, bottle hot, and seal. This makes one gallon, and is good.
A hot-pack grape juice, sweetened heavily and bottled straight from the kettle. The proportions are given by weight, which makes the recipe easy to scale once you know what the numbers mean.
- Porcelain kettleThis means an enamel-lined iron pot, chosen because acidic grape juice reacts with bare iron and copper, taking on a metallic taste and a muddy color. Use enameled or stainless steel, and avoid aluminum.
- The grapesNineteenth-century American recipes of this kind assume slip-skin native grapes such as Concord or Catawba, whose skins and seeds separate readily from the pulp when heated. Table grapes from a supermarket will work but give a thinner, less perfumed juice.
- Weight ratioThree pounds of sugar to ten pounds of grapes is roughly a 30 percent addition by weight, which is very sweet by modern taste. Half that, or a quarter, still keeps well; the sugar here is for palatability rather than preservation, since the acidity of grape juice is what protects it.
- Very little waterA quarter to half a cup in the bottom of the pot is enough to keep the fruit from scorching before its own juice runs. More water dilutes the finished juice, which is already going to be strained rather than reduced.
- Cook till stones and pulp separateTen to fifteen minutes at a bare simmer, crushing with a masher as it goes. Do not boil hard or hold it long; prolonged cooking dulls the fresh grape flavor into something stewed.
- StrainingA thick cloth means jelly bag or several layers of cheesecloth. If you want a clear juice rather than a cloudy one, let the strained juice stand refrigerated for a day or more so the gritty potassium bitartrate crystals natural to grapes settle out, then decant off the top.
- Heat to simmering, bottle hot, sealThis is the hinge: the jars and lids must be hot and clean, the juice filled to within a quarter inch of the rim, and the seal made immediately. Current home-canning practice for high-acid juices adds a five-minute boiling-water bath after sealing, which the original omits.
- YieldTen pounds of grapes with the sugar makes the stated gallon, so figure four quart jars. Refrigerate anything that does not seal and drink it within a week.
Unfermented communion wine was a specific product of the American temperance movement, which by the 1870s had made a theological argument out of the grape: churches that preached total abstinence wanted a sacramental cup that was not alcoholic. The best-known commercial answer came from Thomas Bramwell Welch, a Methodist dentist in Vineland, New Jersey, who in 1869 applied Pasteur's heating method to Concord juice and sold it as "Dr. Welch's Unfermented Wine"; it moved slowly at first. That this recipe appears in an Ohio household manual at all places it in that same temperance current.