Home › The Principles of Cookery › Raisin Cheese
Raisin Cheese
Stone two pounds of raisins, and put them into a saucepan with one pound of sugar, three or four cloves, and half a nutmeg, grated. Boil for an hour and a half, then take the pan from the fire, and when the cheese is a little cool pour it into the dish in which it is to be served. Garnish with thin strips of candied fruit. Time, an hour and a half. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A fruit "cheese" in the Victorian sense: a stiff, sliceable paste of boiled fruit and sugar, containing no dairy at all. The recipe as printed gives no liquid, which is the one thing worth fixing before you start.
- No cheese in itThe name refers to the finished texture, which is firm enough to turn out and slice like a cheese, in the same family as damson cheese and quince paste. Nothing curdles and nothing ferments.
- Add waterTwo pounds of raisins and a pound of sugar over direct heat will scorch within minutes. Start with roughly a cup of water and top up as it reduces; the mixture should stay loose enough to stir throughout.
- Stoning raisinsVictorian raisins were sold with seeds, and stoning two pounds by hand was a long job. Modern seedless raisins skip the step entirely; two pounds is about 6 cups.
- An hour and a half is a guide, not a ruleWith modern heat control and a heavy pan, judge by consistency rather than the clock. It is done when a spoon drawn through leaves a channel that closes only slowly, and the mass pulls away from the sides.
- TextureBoiled raisins stay stubbornly chunky. Pressing the hot mixture through a sieve, or a short blitz with a stick blender, gives the smooth paste the name implies. Do this before it cools and sets.
- SpicingThree or four whole cloves and half a nutmeg is assertive for this quantity. Fish the cloves out before potting unless you want someone to bite one; grate the nutmeg fresh.
- Setting and servingThe recipe has you pour it straight into the dish it is served from; a wetted mould, left to cool completely for several hours, lets you turn it out instead. Serves six to eight as a sweetmeat, sliced thin, and it sits well beside cream, custard or a hard cheese.
- KeepingSugar and long boiling make it stable, but with no additional preservative it is best kept covered in the refrigerator and eaten within a couple of weeks.
- Probable cost1s. 6d. is the book's routine estimate of what the ingredients would come to, a line printed with every entry; here they are dried fruit, sugar, spice and a little candied fruit for the garnish.
Fruit "cheeses" were a standard way of turning a glut of fruit into something that kept: the pulp was boiled hard with sugar until it set solid, potted, and cut in slices months later. Damson and quince versions are the best known in Britain, the latter closely related to Spanish membrillo and Portuguese marmelada. A raisin cheese is the storecupboard cousin, needing no orchard and no season, which is why it turns up in a general household dictionary like Cassell's alongside dozens of other economical sweets, and the instruction to stone two pounds of raisins is a reminder of how much hand work such a recipe assumed.