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Raspberry Jam, Superior
Pick four pounds of freshly-gathered raspberries, and put them into a preserving-pan with one pint of red currant juice. Let them boil for a quarter of an hour, skim well, and add four pounds of loaf sugar. Boil the jam again, and keep it boiling till it will set. Carefully remove the scum as it rises, or the jam will not be bright and clear. Put it into jars; cover in the usual way.
A straightforward equal-weight jam whose one clever move is the currant juice. Raspberries are low in pectin and acid; red currants are high in both, which is why this version sets brightly where an all-raspberry jam often stays loose.
- Red currant juiceA pint (20 fl oz in British measure, about 2.5 US cups) of juice pressed from fresh or lightly cooked red currants. If currants are out of season, this is the ingredient doing the setting work, so a jam made without it will need commercial pectin or a longer boil.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a solid cone and broken up for use. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct equivalent; four pounds is about 9 cups.
- Preserving-panA wide, shallow, unlined copper or brass pan. Any wide heavy-bottomed non-reactive pot works, and width matters more than depth because evaporation is what concentrates the jam. Fill no more than a third full; boiling jam climbs.
- The first quarter-hourThat initial boil is fruit and currant juice only, before sugar. It softens the raspberries and drives off water while pectin extracts. Adding sugar earlier sets the fruit and slows the whole process.
- Testing the set"Till it will set" means 220F / 105C on a sugar thermometer at sea level, or a spoonful chilled on a cold saucer that wrinkles when pushed. With this much currant juice expect roughly 10 to 20 minutes after the sugar dissolves.
- SkimmingThe instruction is repeated for good reason: scum trapped in the jar clouds the jam. Skim as it rises rather than all at once at the end, and a very small knob of butter stirred in at the finish will knock down most of the foam.
- Covering in the usual wayIn this period that typically meant a disc of paper laid on the hot surface and a tied-down cover of paper or bladder. Current practice is hot jam into hot sterilised jars, two-piece lids, and a boiling-water bath of 10 minutes for shelf storage; otherwise refrigerate and use within a few weeks.
- YieldAround 6 pounds of finished jam.
Cassell's marks this one "superior", and the distinction rests entirely on the currant juice. Nineteenth-century preservers had no packet pectin, so they achieved a set by pairing a weak-setting fruit with a strong-setting one: raspberry with red currant, strawberry with red currant, apple juice with almost anything. The pairing was empirical long before the chemistry was understood, and raspberry-and-currant was a standard combination. The insistence on fruit "freshly-gathered" is not sentiment either; pectin degrades as fruit sits, and fruit left standing may set less reliably.