Home › The Principles of Cookery › Gooseberry Jam, Red
Gooseberry Jam, Red
Take the tops and stalks from the gooseberries, and allow three pounds of sugar to every four pounds of fruit. It is a great improvement to add a pound of red currants to every three pounds of gooseberries. Boil the fruit. Keep it well stirred, to prevent it burning, and as soon as the berries begin to break, add the sugar. Let them boil for half an hour, or until the jam will set when a little is put on a plate. If it will not do this at the end of half an hour, it must boil longer. Pour it into jars, and cover closely, in the usual way. Sufficient, a pound of fruit, etc., for a pound of jam. Probable cost, 7d. or 8d. per pound.
A plain preserve of the sort every Victorian household made in July. The method is sound; only the vessels and the covering need bringing up to date.
- The fruitRed gooseberries are the dessert varieties, picked ripe rather than the hard green ones used for pies. Any ripe red or purple gooseberry works; the colour deepens considerably in the pan.
- RatioThree parts sugar to four parts fruit by weight is lean by modern jam standards, where equal weights are common. Gooseberries are high in both pectin and acid, so it sets well, but the keeping quality is lower than a 1:1 jam — expect a shorter shelf life once opened and refrigerate after opening.
- No liquid is specifiedGooseberries are juicy enough to release their own, but they will catch before they do. Add a few tablespoons of water at the start and keep the heat low until the juice runs, then raise it. This is what the instruction to keep it well stirred is guarding against.
- The redcurrantsWorth doing. They add acid and a large amount of pectin, and they push the colour toward a proper ruby. Strip them from the stalks first; the stalks are bitter and will not break down.
- Setting pointThe plate test is the same one used now: chill a saucer, drop on a little jam, wait a minute, push it with a fingertip and look for a wrinkled skin. If you prefer a thermometer, setting point is 220F/105C. Half an hour is a starting estimate, not a rule.
- "Cover closely, in the usual way"For a Victorian cook this meant a disc of waxed paper on the hot surface and a parchment cover tied over the rim. Use sterilised jars and two-piece lids instead, filling to within a quarter inch of the rim while the jam is still near boiling, or water-bath process filled jars for 10 minutes.
- YieldFour pounds of gooseberries with three of sugar gives around six pounds of finished jam, or six to seven standard jars. The book's rule of a pound of jam per pound of fruit understates this, since it counts only the fruit.
- The cost noteSevenpence or eightpence a pound is the pre-decimal price and has no useful modern equivalent; it is there because Cassell's costed almost every entry for housekeepers working to a weekly budget.
Gooseberries were a British obsession long before Cassell's set this down. Nineteenth-century gooseberry clubs in Lancashire and Cheshire held competitive shows for the heaviest single berry, and nurserymen introduced hundreds of named varieties, red, green, yellow and white, most of them now lost. The fruit suited the domestic preserver perfectly: it crops heavily, it ripens in a narrow midsummer window that forces the cook's hand, and it carries enough natural pectin and acid to set without help o to to to home cooks in Britain until well into the twentieth century. The suggestion of adding redcurrants is the older technique for the same problem, borrowing pectin from a neighbouring bush rather than a packet.