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Lemon and Rhubarb Jam
Rhubarb jam is very much improved if flavoured with lemon-rind. Wipe the rhubarb very dry--if old, it must be skinned--cut it into small pieces and weigh it. Allow a pound of sugar, the rind of half a large lemon, chopped small, and half an ounce of bitter almonds to each pound and a quarter of rhubarb; boil all together very gently, until the sugar is dissolved, and keep stirring, to prevent burning; the jam may then be allowed to boil more quickly. When done, put it into jars, cover with oiled and egged or gummed papers, and store in a cool, dry place. Rhubarb jam should be used quickly, as it does not keep well. Time to boil the fruit (reckoning from the time when the sugar is dissolved, and it simmers equally all over), an hour for young rhubarb, an hour and a half for old. Probable cost, 6d. per pound. Sufficient, a pint of sliced rhubarb for a pound of jam.
This is a Victorian preserve built around an ingredient that is no longer sold for eating. The problem is the bitter almonds, and it is not a small one.
- Bitter almonds are the reason to stopBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and wetted. Half an ounce per pound and a quarter of fruit is a substantial dose worked through a jar of jam that will be eaten by the spoonful over days, and the long boil does not reliably drive off all of it. Raw bitter almonds cannot legally be sold for food in the United States and are restricted elsewhere; a current rhubarb jam recipe should be used instead.
- The sugar ratio is low for a keeping preserveA pound of sugar to a pound and a quarter of fruit is well under the roughly equal weights that modern preserving relies on for shelf stability. The book admits it: rhubarb jam "does not keep well" and should be used quickly.
- Oiled, egged or gummed papers are not a sealThese are paper covers stuck down with egg white or gum arabic over the jar mouth, sometimes with an oiled paper disc on the jam surface. They keep dust and insects out; they are not an airtight or sterile closure, and they assume a cold larder and rapid consumption.
- Skinning old rhubarb"If old, it must be skinned" means pulling the stringy outer membrane from late-season stalks, which stays tough and fibrous through cooking. Young spring rhubarb needs only wiping.
- Rhubarb leavesOnly the stalks are food. The leaves carry high levels of oxalic acid and related compounds and are discarded. The recipe does not mention them.
- Probable cost, 6d.Sixpence a pound, priced for a household buying rhubarb by the bundle from a market garden. Costings like this appear throughout the book as a standard part of its recipe format.
Rhubarb was a latecomer to the English dessert table, grown first as a medicinal root and only widely eaten as a stalk from the early nineteenth century, once cheap sugar made its sourness manageable; by the time the book was compiled it was a standard cheap spring fruit. The bitter almond here supplies the marzipan-and-cherry note now got from almond extract, and cookery books of the period call for them freely in ratafias, custards, puddings and jams with no sense that anything is amiss. The lemon rind may also serve a purpose beyond flavour: rhubarb is low in pectin and citrus peel is a good source of it, though this recipe recommends the lemon only as an improvement in flavour. That the book concedes the jam 'does not keep well' fits a preserve covered with paper rather than sealed, and intended to be eaten quickly.