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Boiled Cider
Fresh, sweet cider made from cultivated fruit is the best for boiling. Set the cider over the fire in a large, broad, porcelain-lined dish and let boil until it is reduced one half. Skim frequently while boiling. This may be sealed (corks covered with sealing wax) in bottles or stoneware jugs, or it may be canned in the usual manner, boiling hot, in sterilized fruit jars.
Boiled cider is simply sweet cider reduced over heat until it thickens and darkens. The recipe is short because the technique is: the only real decisions are what cider you start with and how far you take it.
- "Sweet cider" means unfermented juiceIn American usage of this period, cider without qualification often meant hard cider; "sweet cider" is the fresh, cloudy, unfermented pressing. Use fresh apple cider, ideally unpasteurized or lightly pasteurized, with no added preservatives — potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate carry through and concentrate along with everything else.
- Reduced one half is mildHalf-volume gives a thin, tart syrup useful for pies, baked beans and drinks. Traditional New England boiled cider for keeping was taken considerably further; reductions on the order of a seventh of the starting volume are often quoted, and cider or apple molasses further still. Judge by body rather than by clock: a gallon reducing to a half gallon over an open pot takes roughly an hour and a half to two hours.
- The vessel"Porcelain-lined dish" means an enameled iron or steel kettle. The point is a non-reactive surface with a wide mouth for evaporation. Stainless steel or enameled cast iron does the same job; bare cast iron or aluminum will pick up metallic notes from the acid.
- SkimmingPectin and protein rise as a grey-brown foam, mostly early in the boil. Take it off with a flat skimmer or it will settle back in and cloud the finished syrup. The recipe asks for frequent skimming throughout, though the heaviest foam comes up at the start.
- Watch the last quarterWater leaves faster as the volume drops, and concentrated sugar scorches quickly at the bottom. Lower the heat once the cider looks syrupy and stir the bottom regularly from that point.
- Sealing wax and jugsCorks dipped in sealing wax were the nineteenth-century closure for syrups and vinegars. Skip it. Standard canning jars with two-piece lids are more reliable and easier to check.
- Current canning practiceHot-filling sterilized jars was standard advice a century ago; current guidance for acidic fruit juices and syrups is a boiling-water bath, on the order of 5 minutes for pints and quarts and longer for larger jars, adjusted for altitude. Any jar that fails to seal goes in the refrigerator. Once opened, boiled cider keeps for months refrigerated; the sugar concentration does most of the work.
- YieldOne gallon of cider gives two quarts at half reduction. If you take it further toward the traditional syrup, a gallon yields roughly two cups.
Boiled cider belongs to the apple economy of the northeastern United States, where autumn pressings far outran what a household could drink before it turned. Reducing the juice over a fire concentrated its sugar and acid to the point where it kept without fermenting, and the resulting dark syrup did duty as a sweetener, a pie filling base (the boiled cider pie of Vermont and New Hampshire is the best-known survivor), a flavoring for mincemeat and baked beans, and, diluted, a drink. The same logic produced apple butter, made by cooking sauce into the reduced cider. Boiled cider was above all a keeping product, a way of banking a perishable crop.