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Spiced Pickled Grapes
Weigh out seven pounds of grapes and slip the pulps from the skins. Put the pulp over the fire in a white-lined saucepan and let simmer until softened, then pass through a sieve fine enough to keep back the seeds. Add this sifted pulp to the skins with four pounds of sugar, one pint of vinegar, one nutmeg, grated, one tablespoonful and a half ground cinnamon, and a scant tablespoonful of ground cloves. Let the whole simmer very gently for two hours. Store as canned fruit.
A sweet-sour spiced grape conserve of the sort meant to be eaten with roast meat rather than on toast. The method depends entirely on using slip-skin grapes.
- The grapes must be slip-skin"Slip the pulps from the skins" only works with American slip-skin varieties — Concord, Niagara, Catawba — where a pinch pops the pulp free. European table grapes such as Thompson Seedless will not separate and are the wrong recipe entirely. Seven pounds is roughly five quarts of loose grapes.
- White-lined saucepanThat means an enamel-lined pan. The point is a nonreactive surface: a pint of vinegar plus grape acid will pick up metal off bare cast iron or unlined copper and turn the preserve grey and metallic. Stainless steel or enamelled cast iron does the job now.
- Sieving the pulpSimmer the pulp only until it collapses, five to ten minutes, then push it through a sieve while hot. Cold grape pulp is gelatinous and will not go through. A food mill on the finest plate is faster than a sieve and spoon.
- The spice quantities are assertiveOne whole grated nutmeg is about two teaspoons, and with a tablespoon and a half of cinnamon and nearly a tablespoon of cloves this is a heavily spiced preserve by modern taste. Ground spices that had sat in a period pantry may also have been less potent than a freshly opened jar; consider starting with half the cloves and adjusting.
- Two hours is longer than neededModern stovetops and thin pans reduce far faster than a coal range. Begin testing at forty-five minutes: the mixture is done when it mounds on a cold spoon and the skins are tender. Held the full two hours it will darken toward black and the skins can turn leathery.
- "Store as canned fruit"The instruction is left unexplained. In practice: fill clean hot half-pint or pint jars, leaving headspace, and process in a boiling-water bath according to current published times for grape preserves. The sugar and vinegar make this a high-acid product, but the seal still needs a proper process, not paraffin or an inverted jar.
- YieldExpect about five to six pints, depending how far you reduce it. Serve as a condiment with ham, pork, game or sharp cheese rather than as a breakfast jam.
Spiced fruit — grapes, peaches, currants, plums cooked with vinegar, sugar and warm spices — filled a specific place on the American table between roughly 1870 and 1930: a sweet-sour relish set beside roast and boiled meats, occupying the niche now held by chutney or cranberry sauce. The technique of slipping pulp from skin, cooking them separately and reuniting them is peculiar to the Concord-type grape, the dominant American grape after its introduction in Massachusetts in the mid-nineteenth century; its tough, flavourful skin holds the colour and its soft pulp holds the seeds, so the cook who wants both must part them. That such a recipe could be read either way reflects how fluid the categories were, with a pint of vinegar in four pounds of sugar reading as fruit preserve to the period rather than pickle.