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Black Currant Preserves
For each pound of stemmed currants take one cup of red currant juice and one pound of sugar. Heat all together to the boiling point and skim as needed. Do not stir the fruit but shake the pan occasionally. Let boil from ten to fifteen minutes.
A four-line formula that assumes you already know how preserving works. The proportions are sound; what is missing is the finishing and the sealing.
- The hinge: do not stirStirring breaks black currants down into jam. Shaking the pan every minute or two moves the fruit enough to stop it catching while leaving the berries whole, which is the whole point of a preserve as against a jam.
- Red currant juiceCrush ripe red currants, heat gently until the juice runs, and strain through a jelly bag; a pound of fruit yields roughly a cup. It is there for acid and extra pectin, not sweetness. Bottled unsweetened cranberry juice is the nearest substitute if red currants are unavailable, though it shifts the flavour.
- Sourcing black currantsStill uncommon in American markets because of long-standing restrictions on growing Ribes. Frozen black currants work well here and need no thawing; add them straight to the pan with the sugar and juice.
- Judging the ten to fifteen minutesSuch a short range would only hold in a wide, shallow pan over a strong flame; the recipe itself says nothing about the pan. Test rather than time: the syrup should reach 220F, or a spoonful chilled on a cold saucer should wrinkle when pushed. Black currants are high in pectin and acid and set readily, so overcooking gives a stiff, dulled preserve.
- The panUse a wide preserving pan; depth slows evaporation, which forces a longer boil and a darker set. Avoid bare aluminium, which reacts with the fruit acid. Unlined copper is the traditional preserving metal, though stainless or another non-reactive pan is the safer modern choice.
- SkimmingSkim the foam as it rises rather than at the end; it clouds the finished syrup. A small knob of butter stirred in at the start reduces it, though purists leave it out.
- Sealing, which the recipe omitsThe recipe stops before any sealing instruction. Current practice is to ladle into hot half-pint jars, leave a quarter-inch headspace, and process in a boiling-water bath for ten minutes, adjusting for altitude. Unprocessed, it keeps in the refrigerator for a few weeks.
- YieldEach pound of fruit with its pound of sugar and cup of juice makes roughly two to three half-pint jars.
Black currants have been a preserving fruit in Britain and northern Europe for centuries, valued less for eating out of hand than for the depth of colour and the very high pectin and acid content that make them almost impossible to fail with. Their scarcity in American kitchens is a matter of forestry rather than taste: Ribes species host white pine blister rust, and cultivation was restricted in the United States from the early twentieth century onward, with federal and state bans lifted only gradually and in some places quite recently. The instruction to add red currant juice reflects the older preserving logic of using one fruit to correct another, adding acid and pectin from a related berry rather than reaching for commercial pectin.