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Orange and Currant Jam
7 pounds currants 2 pounds raisins 6 pounds sugar 2 oranges Seed the raisins, cutting each in halves.
Cook half an hour; chop the peel of the orange fine, squeeze the juice over the currants, cook the currants fifteen minutes, then add the sugar and rind and let cook until quite thick. Cooking the orange rind tender before adding it to the currants improves the jam.
A large-batch fruit jam whose instructions are written in the compressed style of the period, with the order of operations left partly to the cook's judgment. The quantities are meant for a preserving kettle, not a saucepan.
- Sort out the sequence firstAs printed, "Cook half an hour" follows the raisin-seeding line and may refer to simmering the raisins until plump before the currants go in; the recipe does not say so, and no liquid is specified. The closing sentence recommends cooking the rind tender before it is added, which suggests simmering it separately and putting it in with the sugar.
- Scale it downSeven pounds of currants plus two of raisins and six of sugar needs a large preserving pan, 12 quarts or so, and yields a great many jars. A quarter batch, about 1 lb 12 oz currants, 8 oz raisins, 1 lb 8 oz sugar and half an orange, behaves the same and is far easier to stir.
- Currants means red or black currantsNot dried Zante currants, which are raisins. Fresh currants are very high in pectin and acid, which is why this sets on a modest 6 lb sugar to 9 lb fruit ratio, well below the near equal weights most jam recipes use. Frozen currants work and need no thawing.
- Seeded raisinsMuscat raisins of the period carried seeds and had to be halved and picked over by hand. Modern seedless raisins need only be halved, or roughly chopped, so they distribute through the jam.
- The rind is the hingeOrange peel simmered from raw in a sugared fruit mass tends to stay leathery. Simmer the finely chopped zest in water for 15 to 20 minutes on its own, drain, and add it with the sugar. The recipe recommends as much at the end; do it at the start.
- Judging "quite thick"Cook to 220F on a sugar thermometer, or until a spoonful chilled on a cold saucer wrinkles when pushed. With this much fruit, expect 20 to 40 minutes of hard boiling after the sugar dissolves, with constant stirring near the end as it catches easily.
- SealingThe recipe gives no sealing instructions. Jam this acidic keeps well, but for shelf storage follow current water-bath processing guidance for jams; otherwise refrigerate and use within a month.
Currants were a staple of the North American kitchen garden well into the twentieth century, valued precisely for the qualities that make this recipe work: a sharp acidity and enough natural pectin to set without commercial help. Their decline was not culinary but agricultural, as Ribes species host white pine blister rust and cultivation was restricted in many states from the 1910s onward, which is one reason recipes like this one read as unfamiliar today. The additions of raisins and orange are typical of the period's preserving books, where dried fruit bulked out a tart jam and stretched the sugar, while citrus peel supplied a bitter edge borrowed from marmalade practice. The instruction to seed the raisins is a reminder that seeded varieties were still sold alongside the seedless ones spreading through California vineyards.