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Black Currant Preserve
Dry thoroughly, cut off the heads and stalks and put the black currants into a preservingpan with some red currant juice (half a pint to a pound of the black currants), and a pound and a half of good sifted loaf sugar. Make it boil up, remove the scum, carefully scraping off the fruit from the sides of the pan. Shake it, but do not mash the currants. Allow it to boil from ten to fifteen minutes. Put into jars, and when cool cover closely. It is fit for tarts or excellent with cream. Probable cost, 6d. to 8d. per half pound pot.
A straightforward high-sugar preserve, with the red currant juice doing the work of a pectin sachet. A few of the terms and the finishing method need translating.
- The proportionsThe recipe gives half a pint (about 285 ml) of red currant juice for each pound of stemmed black currants, and a pound and a half of good sifted loaf sugar; it does not state the total weight of fruit, so the sugar-to-fruit ratio has to be inferred. Read as a pound and a half of sugar to a pound of fruit, it is higher than most modern jam recipes, which helps it set and keep.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined white sugar sold in a hard cone and broken up as needed; "sifted" means crushed and passed through a sieve. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct substitute, and preserving sugar if you want faster dissolving.
- Red currant juiceSimmer red currants with a splash of water until they collapse, then strain. It supplies acid and pectin. If red currants are unavailable, the juice of underripe cooking apples strained through a cloth is the closest traditional stand-in, though the flavour is less bright.
- A preserving panA wide, heavy pan with sloping sides; period examples were often copper or brass. Any wide heavy-based stainless pan works; the point is a large surface area for evaporation. Avoid unlined copper or aluminium with this much fruit acid.
- The hinge: do not mashThe instruction to shake the pan rather than stir is what keeps the currants whole, so the finished preserve has berries suspended in jelly rather than a purée. Lift and swirl the pan; use a spoon only to lift scum and scrape fruit from the sides.
- Ten to fifteen minutesTiming depends on your pan. Judge by a setting test: 220F/105C on a sugar thermometer, or a spoonful chilled on a cold saucer that wrinkles when pushed.
- Covering the jars"Cover closely when cool" reflects the old waxed-disc-and-paper method. Modern practice is to fill clean, hot jars to within a quarter inch of the rim and seal at once, then store opened jars in the refrigerator. For long shelf storage, follow current water-bath processing times for jam.
- Yield and costThe recipe gives no total weight of fruit, so no yield can be read from it. The "6d. to 8d." is pre-decimal pence per half-pound pot, a note for the household accounts rather than the cook.
Black currants were a kitchen-garden staple in Britain long before they were a commercial crop, valued as much for the throat syrups and cordials made from them as for tarts. They are naturally high in both pectin and acid, which is why they took to sugar so readily in the era before commercial pectin; the addition of red currant juice here is belt and braces, sharpening the flavour and helping towards a firm set. Cassell's, compiled for a middle-class household running on seasonal gluts, gives the probable cost per pot so the mistress of the house could weigh making against buying, a routine calculation in Victorian domestic manuals. The fruit's later scarcity in the United States has a separate cause: black currants host white pine blister rust, and American states restricted their cultivation from the early twentieth century, which is why the flavour remains far more familiar in Britain than across the Atlantic.