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Grape, Green, Marmalade
Pick the grapes, put them into a saucepan, and barely cover them with boiling water. Let them simmer for eight or ten minutes, but do not let them break. Take them out, drain them, let them cool, then press them through a coarse sieve, and add a pound of loaf sugar to every pound of pulp. Boil them gently for twenty minutes, pour into jars, cover with brandied and gummed paper, and keep in a cool place. Sufficient, one pound of fruit for one pound of jam. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. per pound.
A thrift preserve built from unripe grapes thinned off the vine, sharp enough that it needs no added acid. The whole method turns on not bursting the fruit before it goes through the sieve.
- "Green" means unripeThese are hard, sour grapes picked before they colour or sweeten, not green-skinned dessert varieties. Their high acid and pectin are what make the equal-weight sugar set; ripe table grapes will give a syrupy, dull result.
- Simmer gently, don't break themEight to ten minutes at a bare tremble softens the flesh so it will pass a sieve. The point of keeping the skins whole is presumably to stop seeds and skin breaking up into the pulp before it reaches the sieve.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in a cone and broken up as needed. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct equivalent; the point of specifying loaf was purity, which is now standard.
- The sieve does the workA coarse sieve holds back pips and skins. Push with a wooden spoon or ladle and scrape the underside, then weigh only what has come through before adding sugar.
- Twenty minutes is a guideBoiling times in a wide, shallow pan differ from those in a deep one. Judge the set instead: 220F on a thermometer, or a spoonful that wrinkles on a chilled saucer.
- Brandied and gummed paperA round of paper dipped in brandy laid on the hot surface, then a gummed paper cover stuck down over the jar. The spirit was held to discourage mould in a cool larder. It is not a seal by modern standards.
- StorageTreat this as a refrigerator preserve, good for a few weeks, or use a current tested water-bath canning procedure if you want it shelf-stable. "A cool place" in a Victorian house was considerably colder than a modern kitchen cupboard.
- YieldOne pound of grapes gives roughly a pound of finished marmalade, as the recipe itself states, or about a cup and a half. The stated 1s. 2d. per pound is the book's own estimated cost and is of historical interest only.
Green grapes were often less a crop than a by-product of the glasshouse: gardeners on estates with vines under glass generally thinned the bunches hard in early summer so the remaining fruit would swell, and the discarded berries came into the kitchen by the basketful. Cookery books of the period found uses for them in pickles, sauces and preserves, much as unripe grapes had long been pressed for verjuice, the sour juice used as a souring agent before lemons were cheap and common. Cassell's places this among a run of grape preparations in a dictionary arranged alphabetically. The equal-weight sugar formula is the standard Victorian jam ratio, relying on the fruit's own acid and pectin rather than on anything added, which unripe grapes supply in abundance.