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GOOSEBERRY JAM, GREEN (another way)
Cut the stalks and tops from three pounds of green gooseberries. Bruise them slightly, put them into a preserving-pan, and let them boil for seven or eight minutes, stirring all the time, to prevent them sticking to the pan. Mix with them two pounds and a half of powdered loaf sugar, bring them quickly to the boil, then simmer them gently for three-quarters of an hour. A pound of jam may be obtained from about a pound of fruit. Probable cost, 7d. or 8d. per pound.
A plain two-ingredient preserve that depends entirely on the fruit being picked hard and green. A few notes on the vessels, the sugar and the set.
- Green gooseberries are the pointThese are unripe, firm, sour berries, not the soft ripe dessert sort. Underripe gooseberries carry a great deal of pectin and acid, which is why this jam sets with no added lemon or preserving sugar.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a solid cone and broken or crushed for use; "powdered" here means crushed fine, not modern powdered/icing sugar with its cornflour. Use ordinary granulated sugar, 2 lb 8 oz to the 3 lb of fruit.
- Preserving-panA wide, heavy, unlined copper or brass pan. Any wide heavy-bottomed stainless pan works; width matters more than depth because evaporation is what concentrates the jam. Fill no more than a third, as boiling jam climbs.
- Topping and tailing"Cut the stalks and tops" means removing the stem and the dried flower remnant at the other end. Tedious with 3 lb, but the tails stay leathery in the finished jam.
- The first boil without sugarSeven or eight minutes of stirring softens the skins and releases pectin before the sugar goes in. Sugar added to raw gooseberries toughens the skins and they stay bullet-like in the jar.
- Judge by set, not by clockThree-quarters of an hour is a guide, not a rule. Test instead: setting point is 220F/105C, or a spoonful chilled on a cold saucer that wrinkles when pushed. Green gooseberry jam may well reach this inside the stated time.
- Yield and pottingRoughly 3 lb of jam, about four 12 oz jars. Pot into hot, freshly sterilised jars and seal at once; store cool and dark, and refrigerate after opening.
- The cost line7d. or 8d. per pound is pre-decimal pence. Cost lines of this kind appear throughout Cassell's, presumably so a preserve could be costed against buying it. It has no modern equivalent worth calculating.
Gooseberries were a British obsession in the nineteenth century, with gooseberry clubs in the industrial north competing to grow the heaviest single berry, and the fruit ripened early enough to be the first jam of the summer season. Green gooseberry jam is the thrifty version: the crop is thinned in late spring so the remaining berries swell, and the hard green thinnings, useless for the table, go straight into the preserving pan. Because unripe gooseberries are high in both pectin and acid, they set reliably without any of the additions later recipes call for, which is why Cassell's can give a bare two-ingredient method and still promise a pound of jam from a pound of fruit. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, like a number of comparable household books of the period, printed several methods for the same preserve side by side and attached a probable cost to each, on the assumption that the mistress of the house was checking the kitchen's economy as much as its cooking.