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Cherries Preserved in Syrup
Choose light, sound, ripe cherries. Remove the stones without injuring the fruit, which may be done by drawing them out with the stalk, or pushing them out at one end with a bodkin or quill. Allow a pint and a half of water and a pound of sugar for every pound of fruit, weighed after it has been stoned. Put the sugar and water into a preserving-pan, and let it boil for a quarter of an hour, skimming it carefully; then throw in the fruit, and let it boil for another quarter of an hour. Pour it with the syrup into a large jar, and let it remain until next day, when the cherries must be put into a sieve to drain, and a pint of white currant juice (see CURRANT JUICE) allowed for every four pounds of cherries. The juice and the syrup must be boiled together fifteen minutes, when the cherries may be put with them and boiled again for four or five minutes. Put the cherries into jars, cover them with the syrup, lay brandy papers on the top, and tie them down closely. It will be more economical in small families to put the preserve into one-pound pots, as there is an amount of evaporation in larger jars, which makes a considerable difference in the expense. Probable cost of cherries, 3d. to 6d. per pound.
A two-day sugar preserve of the old school: the fruit is candied gradually in a thin syrup rather than boiled hard into jam, so it keeps its shape and its colour. Almost everything here still works; the vocabulary and the sealing are what need translating.
- The hinge: two short boils, not one long oneThe point of resting the cherries overnight in syrup is osmotic — sugar moves into the fruit slowly and the cherries stay whole. Rushing it into a single long boil gives you cherry jam.
- Stoning without a stonerA bodkin is a blunt thick needle and a quill is a cut feather shaft; a sturdy hairpin, a piping tip, or a plunger-type cherry pitter does the same job. Work over a bowl and reserve every drop of juice.
- Weigh after stoningThe instruction is explicit and matters: stoning costs roughly a tenth of the weight, so buy a little over. The syrup is a pound of sugar to a pint and a half of water — thin by jam standards, and deliberately so.
- PintsThis is a British book, so a pint is 20 fl oz (about 570 ml), not the American 16. A gill, if it appears in the cross-references, is 5 fl oz.
- White currant juiceStrained juice from cooked white currants, used here for acid and pectin without staining the pale cherries. Redcurrant juice works identically but tints the syrup pink; failing either, use the juice of a lemon per two pounds of fruit and accept a looser set.
- Choice of cherry"Light, sound, ripe" may point at pale varieties such as the old white-hearts, in the same spirit as the white currant juice. Morellos and other sour cherries preserve beautifully but will give a dark syrup.
- Brandy papersRounds of paper soaked in brandy and laid directly on the hot surface of the preserve — a spirit barrier against surface mould before airtight lids were common. "Tie them down closely" means a paper or parchment cover fastened with string, not a vacuum seal.
- Storing it nowFill hot into hot sterilised jars and seal with two-piece lids; treat it as a refrigerator preserve once opened. If you keep the brandy-paper-and-string finish for the look, store the jars cold and check the surface regularly.
- YieldNot given. The author recommends small pots for the reason stated in the text: less surface area, less evaporation, less waste.
Cassell's dictionary was written for households that bought fruit by the pound in season and expected to have something in the store cupboard in January, and the closing note on cost — threepence to sixpence a pound — is the kind of detail that places it in the Victorian market. Preserving whole fruit in a thin syrup over two days, rather than boiling it hard, was the older confectioner's method, and was still what a good cook meant by "preserved" as opposed to "jam"; the aim was fruit that kept its shape for garnishing tarts, creams and dessert plates. The white currant juice is the giveaway of a careful hand: currants were a common domestic source of setting power long before commercial pectin, and choosing the white sort over the red is a matter of not muddying the colour of pale cherries. Brandy papers appear through nineteenth-century preserving books and were an ordinary defence against surface mould in an age of paper-covered pots.