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Rhubarb Jam to Imitate Preserved Ginger
Take some young but thick rhubarb, pare it, cut it into two-inch lengths, and weigh it. Place it on dishes in a single layer, and over each pound sprinkle the grated rind of one lemon and one pound of powdered loaf sugar. Let it remain twenty-four hours. The next day boil half a pound of loaf sugar in half a pint of water for ten minutes, pour into this the syrup from the rhubarb, boil it twenty minutes, and add as much grated ginger as will make it pleasantly hot. Put in the pieces of rhubarb, and let them simmer gently until they are tender, without being broken, then lift them out with a spoon one by one, put them into jars, boil the syrup five minutes longer, and pour it over the rhubarb. When cold, tie the jars in the usual way, and store in a cool dry place. Time, two days. Probable cost, 6d. to 8d. per pound.
A Victorian imitation preserve: rhubarb held in a heavy ginger syrup so that the pieces stay whole and translucent, in the manner of Chinese preserved ginger in syrup. The whole point is intact pieces, so the handling matters more than the timings.
- The hinge: keep the pieces wholeThe 24-hour sugar maceration draws water out and firms the rhubarb so it can survive cooking; skip it and you get sauce. Simmer barely at a tremble, never a rolling boil, and lift each piece out with a slotted spoon rather than tipping the pan.
- Choose the right rhubarb"Young but thick" means early stalks with real substance, not the thin ends of a late-summer crop. Forced pink rhubarb looks best but collapses fastest; field-grown green-and-red stalks hold their shape better.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined cane sugar broken from a cone; ordinary granulated white sugar is the equivalent. "Powdered loaf sugar" is loaf sugar crushed fine, so use caster/superfine for the maceration, where it needs to dissolve quickly.
- Half a pint of waterAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups or 285 ml. Boiled ten minutes with half a pound of sugar it will already be a syrup before the rhubarb liquor goes in.
- Ginger"Grated ginger" most likely means fresh root, grated fine, though dried root was also grated in this period. Add it gradually and taste the syrup as it boils, as the recipe directs: only as much as will make it pleasantly hot.
- Testing the syrupThe final five-minute boil is meant to thicken the syrup after the fruit has diluted it. Judge by eye rather than clock: it should coat a spoon and fall in heavy drops, around 220F if you use a thermometer.
- Sealing and storage"Tie the jars in the usual way" means a round of waxed paper and a cover of paper or bladder tied with string, which is not a seal by modern standards. Treat this as a refrigerator preserve and eat it within a month or two, or use current water-bath canning instructions for jars and processing times.
- Yield and costThe rhubarb, lemon rind and maceration sugar scale by the pound, though the half-pound of sugar and half-pint of water for the syrup are given as fixed quantities. The "6d. to 8d. per pound" is a period price note, not an instruction.
- ServingIt is sweeter and hotter than a spread; serve it in small quantities, as preserved ginger in syrup was served.
Preserved ginger in syrup arrived in British grocers' shops in stoneware jars from Canton and stayed expensive throughout the nineteenth century, which is exactly why Victorian cookery books are full of ways to imitate it. Rhubarb was the obvious stand-in: cheap, abundant from spring onward in any garden, firm enough to hold a shape when candied slowly, and bland enough to take on whatever flavour the syrup carried. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, a vast household compendium of the later nineteenth century "