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GRAPES, TO PRESERVE IN BRANDY (for winter dessert)
Take some fine bunches of grapes. Look them over carefully, to see that all are quite sound, prick each grape in three places, and lay them in deep earthen jars, Cover them with white sugar-candy, crushed to a fine powder, and fill up the jars with brandy. Cover the jars securely with a bladder, and keep in a cool dry place.
A brandied fruit preserve of the simplest kind: sound grapes, sugar, spirit, and time. The proportions are left to the cook, which is workable so long as the fruit stays fully submerged.
- The hinge: nothing bruised, nothing exposedAny grape with a split skin or soft spot will cloud the jar and can start fermenting. Every grape must also stay below the surface of the brandy — use a small glass weight or a fitted disc, since fruit that bobs above the liquid will discolour and mould.
- Sugar-candyWhite sugar-candy is crystallised cane sugar, chemically the same as ordinary granulated sugar but slower to dissolve. Plain granulated or caster sugar works identically here; there is no need to seek out candy and crush it.
- How much sugarThe original gives no quantity, which is a genuine gap rather than something to guess at. Comparable brandied-fruit preserves often use somewhere in the region of a quarter to a third of the fruit's weight in sugar, though practice varied widely; more sugar gives a sweeter, syrupier result and a thinner spirit.
- Brandy strengthThe preservative here is alcohol, and it needs to stay strong. Use a spirit of at least 40% ABV; the grapes will release juice and dilute it, so a low-proof or already-sweetened brandy leaves too weak a mixture to keep well.
- PrickingThe three pricks let the syrup and spirit into the grape and the juice out, so the fruit does not shrivel or float. A clean darning needle or a cocktail stick is right; a knife tip tears the skin.
- The bladderA cleaned animal bladder was tied wet over the jar mouth and shrank tight as it dried, giving a firm seal. Use a glass preserving jar with a lid, and avoid bare metal lids, which corrode in contact with the spirit vapour.
- Jars and storageWash and dry the jars thoroughly before filling — the alcohol does the preserving, but a clean start avoids cloudiness. A cool dark cupboard is better than the term "cool dry place" suggests, as light fades the fruit.
- Timing and servingGive the jars at least six to eight weeks before broaching, turning them occasionally in the first fortnight to dissolve the sugar. Served as dessert, a small bunch per person is generous; the strained liqueur is worth keeping for pouring over ice cream.
Fruit put down in spirit was one of the standard ways a Victorian household carried the taste of late summer into December, alongside bottling, drying and jam-making. Grapes were a particular point of pride: a heated glasshouse or vinery was a mark of a well-run country establishment, and the gardener's hothouse muscats appeared at dessert long after outdoor fruit had finished. Preserving them in brandy meant the best bunches could be shown at the Christmas table, and the method belongs to the same family as brandied cherries, morello brandy and the German Rumtopf — a reminder, too, that dessert in this period meant the fruit course at the end of dinner, not the pudding.