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Jam, Mixed, for Nursery Use
Take equal weights of any fruit that is in season, such as gooseberries, red or black currants, raspberries, or cherries. Boil them gently for half an hour, then weigh the fruit, and put half a pound of sugar to every pound of pulp and boil twenty minutes longer. When cherries are used they must be boiled twenty minutes alone before the other fruit is added to them. This jam will not keep more than two or three months. Probable cost, 6d. per pound.
A thrifty mixed-fruit jam with roughly half the sugar of a keeping preserve, which is exactly why the book admits it lasts only a few months. Treat it as a fresh jam rather than a shelf preserve.
- The sugar ratio is the whole pointHalf a pound of sugar to a pound of cooked pulp is about 33 per cent sugar, against 60 per cent or more in a standard jam. It tastes more of fruit and less cloying, but sugar is what makes jam self-preserving, and at this level it is not.
- StoragePot it hot into clean jars, cool, and keep it in the refrigerator for a few weeks or the freezer for longer. Do not store it in a cupboard on the strength of the original text; if you want a shelf-stable jar, follow a current tested water-bath process with its stated sugar and headspace.
- Weigh after the first boilThe half-hour simmer is there to break the fruit down and drive off water; the sugar is then calculated on the reduced pulp, not the raw fruit. Skipping the weighing throws the ratio out.
- Cherries firstThe book gives no reason, but cherries break down more slowly than currants or raspberries, which is the likeliest explanation for the separate twenty minutes. Stone them before cooking; the original does not say to, but fishing out stones later is miserable and the jam is meant for nursery eaters.
- Pectin balanceGooseberries and both red and black currants are high in pectin and acid; cherries are low in both and raspberries only moderate. Keeping at least half the mix gooseberry or currant will help, or the jam may stay syrupy at this sugar level.
- Testing the setTwenty minutes is a guide, not a rule. Use the cold-saucer test, or 220F on a sugar thermometer, though a low-sugar jam will always set softer and may never reach that temperature before it scorches.
- Skimming and scorchingSkim the pink foam as it rises and stir the base of the pan often. Low-sugar mixtures catch more readily than heavy ones, and burnt fruit will taint the whole batch.
- Yield and costTwo pounds of mixed fruit will give something in the region of two pounds of finished jam, or three medium jars, depending on how far the pulp reduces. The 6d. per pound is a Victorian price and no guide to anything now.
Cassell's seems to separate its preserves by intended eater, and this one is explicitly for the nursery: cheaper, softer set, less sugar, made from whatever the garden or the market had glutted that week. Sugar was a significant cost in a Victorian preserve, though duty was abolished in 1874 and prices fell steeply thereafter, so using less brought the price down; and a household that got through jam quickly at nursery tea had no need of a jar that kept a year. The frankness of "will not keep more than two or three months" reads as characteristic of the book, which often seems to tell you the limits of a method rather than pretending it has none. It also reflects a working larder rhythm: gooseberries in June, currants and raspberries in July, cherries alongside them, all boiled up as they came and eaten before the next season's fruit arrived.