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Raspberry Jam with Currant Juice
Use equal weights of raspberries and sugar and half the weight of the raspberries in currant juice. Let fruit and juice boil together fifteen to twenty minutes; then add the hot sugar and let boil until the mixture is thick, skimming as needed.
Rose-leaf Jam (a Grecian Recipe, Adelaide Keen) Gather the petals of fresh red roses, being sure that they are free from insects. Add an equal quantity of sugar and water enough to dissolve the sugar; set the whole in the sun under glass until the sugar is well melted. Then cook for twenty minutes, stirring well. Pour into jars and cork tight. The Grecian custom is to serve this jam with coffee to guests who call in the afternoon. +
Two preserves run together on one page: a raspberry jam braced with currant juice, and a Greek rose-petal sweet. Both are worth making, but each depends on an assumption the original leaves unstated.
- Everything is by weightEqual weights of fruit and sugar, plus currant juice at half the weight of the berries. For 2 lb raspberries that is 2 lb sugar and 1 lb (roughly 2 cups) currant juice. Weigh rather than measure by volume; raspberries pack unpredictably.
- The currant juice is the pectinThe currant juice supplies pectin -- Raspberries are only moderately pectin-rich, and red currant juice is high in both pectin and acid, which likely explains why the fruit and juice boil together before the sugar goes in. Substituting water or a low-pectin juice risks a looser, syrupy set.
- "Hot sugar"The sugar was warmed before being stirred in so that it dissolved without knocking the boil down. The original gives no method or temperature for warming it. Worth doing; it shortens the time at the setting stage and keeps the colour bright.
- Judging "until thick"Use a thermometer: 220F at sea level, or about 8F above the boiling point of water where you are. Expect 10-20 minutes after the sugar goes in. The cold-plate test works as a cross-check.
- YieldThe quantities above give roughly five to six half-pint jars of raspberry jam.
- Roses must be unsprayedOld red garden roses and rugosas have the perfume this recipe wants; modern florist and nursery roses are routinely treated with systemic pesticides and are not food. Use petals from a plant you know, trim off the bitter white heels, and reckon on a very large basket of petals for a modest jar.
- The sun-and-glass stepSetting the petals, sugar and water under glass is a maceration, not a cooking stage; it draws out the color and scent and dissolves the sugar. A covered bowl on a warm windowsill for several hours does the same thing, and the 20-minute cook that follows is what actually preserves it.
- Sealing"Cork tight" was normal for a preserve of this sugar concentration, poured hot. Current practice is a hot-water bath for 10 minutes in standard two-piece jars, or simply keeping the jars in the refrigerator and using them within a few weeks.
Currant juice is often said to have served as a household pectin long before commercial pectin was sold in packets: red currants are high in both pectin and acid, and period cookbooks show cooks using their juice to set jams from berries that would not set alone, raspberries and strawberries above all. The rose-leaf jam that follows belongs to the Greek tradition of glyk delete