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Blackberry Syrup
Press out the juice from very ripe blackberries, and to each pint add one pound of brown sugar boiled in a pint of water to a rich syrup; allow it to boil for fifteen or twenty minutes, stirring it well; put a wine-glassful of brandy to each quart. When quite cold bottle for use. Probable cost, without brandy, 1s. 6d. per quart.
A straightforward fruit syrup, the kind of thing a Victorian kitchen kept for winter puddings and sore throats. The proportions are sound; only the vessels, the sugar and the keeping need translating.
- The ratio to hold ontoOne pound of sugar and one pint of water per pint of blackberry juice. In practice that is about 450 g sugar dissolved in 570 ml water, boiled down, then combined with 570 ml juice.
- Wine-glassfulIn cookery books of this period a wine-glass is reckoned at roughly 2 fl oz (60 ml), not the capacity of a modern wine glass. That is 60 ml of brandy per quart of finished syrup.
- Quart and pintThese are imperial: a pint is 20 fl oz (570 ml), a quart 40 fl oz (1.14 l). US pints and quarts are smaller, so scale the water and juice accordingly.
- Brown sugarNineteenth-century brown sugar was less refined and more strongly flavoured than today's light brown. Demerara or a soft dark brown gives a closer result than white sugar, which produces a cleaner but blander syrup.
- Getting the juice outCrush the berries and warm them gently before pressing; cold berries give up little. Strain through a jelly bag or muslin if you want a clear syrup, and expect roughly a pint of juice from 2 lb of fruit.
- The fifteen to twenty minutesThat is a real reduction, not a token boil, and it is what gives the syrup body and keeping quality. Stir often, since the sugar catches easily once the mixture thickens.
- Bottling and keepingThe recipe says only to bottle it when quite cold. Fill scalded bottles, cool, and keep it in the refrigerator; a sugar syrup of this strength holds for a few months chilled, but it is not a sealed preserve and should not be treated as one.
- Yield and useExpect a little over a quart. Dilute with still or sparkling water, spoon over ice cream, milk puddings or sponge, or use in place of cassis in a drink.
- The cost line1s. 6d. per quart was the compiler's guide for a household ledger, not an instruction. It is useful mainly as a reminder that sugar, not fruit, was the expensive part.
Blackberry syrup sat on the line between the store cupboard and the medicine chest. Wild brambles cost nothing but the picking, and the resulting cordial was taken as a remedy as much as it was poured over puddings -- blackberry root and fruit preparations appear in nineteenth-century domestic medicine chiefly as astringents for bowel complaints, alongside their culinary cousins, and the brandy here does double duty as preservative and restorative. Cassell's, first issued in the 1870s and reprinted in expanded form for decades, was built for exactly this kind of thrift: a hedgerow crop, a pound of cheap brown sugar, and a costing in shillings and pence so the cook could see whether it was worth her while.