Home › The Principles of Cookery › Siberian Crab Apples, Preserved
Siberian Crab Apples, Preserved
For preserving, the Siberian crabs should be gathered before they are fully ripe, as their fine acidity and agreeable texture are then in perfection; when mellow, they are mealy and juiceless. Fill the jars with them in order to judge what quantity will suffice, put them into a saucepan of boiling water, and barely scald them; the moment one of the skins begins to crack, take them off the fire, pour them into a stone colander, peel them (this operation is easily performed, for the peel will curl up as fine, tough, and thin as gold-beater's-skin); then, having made a thin syrup, put the fruit into the jars and pour it hot upon them, push down the apples as they rise to the surface, in order to ensure their all coming in contact with the syrup, and set them away uncovered. On the following day pour them all out into a colander, place the syrup in the saucepan with more sugar, so as to ensure a thick syrup, boil and skim it, and again return it hot over the fruit; continue to keep the mouths of the jars open, and the next day, if the apples are soft enough, and the syrup appears sufficiently thick and clear, tie them over with bladder. In a week, look at them, and, if any mould or fermentation begin to show, reboil the syrup as before directed. For puddings and pies the Siberian crab cannot be excelled. These apples require neither peeling nor coring, and if used before they become mellow, are juicy and brisk in flavour; the core remains entire, and imparts a unique and most delicious flavour; they are less trouble also than most other fruits from their being dressed whole.
A Victorian open-kettle fruit preserve, written before anyone understood why a sealed jar keeps. The technique of building the syrup over three days is sound cookery; the storage method at the end is not, and the recipe itself admits as much.
- Why it fails as a preserveHot syrup is poured over fruit into jars that are then left uncovered overnight, twice, and finally tied over with bladder — a membrane cover, not a vacuum seal. Nothing is processed, no headspace or acidity is controlled, and no sugar quantity is given, so the finished syrup may be nowhere near the concentration that inhibits yeasts and moulds.
- The recipe expects spoilage"In a week, look at them, and, if any mould or fermentation begin to show, reboil the syrup" is an instruction that assumes contamination as normal. Surface mould on a fruit preserve is not confined to the surface; the visible growth is the top of a colony whose filaments run through the syrup, and some species produce mycotoxins that reboiling does not destroy. A current tested preserving recipe should be used instead.
- No measured sugar anywhere"A thin syrup" and "more sugar, so as to ensure a thick syrup" are judgements made by eye. Preservation by sugar depends on hitting a specific soluble-solids concentration, which cannot be estimated from how a syrup looks in a pan.
- BladderDried pig or ox bladder, softened in water and tied wet over the jar mouth so it shrank tight as it dried. It was a common Victorian jar cover, alongside oiled paper and waxed cloth, before screw bands and rubber rings, and it is better at excluding dust and insects than at making an airtight seal.
- Siberian crabMalus baccata and its garden hybrids, bearing cherry-sized fruit on a long stalk, quite unlike the hedgerow crab. High in acid and pectin. Small ornamental crab apples sold today vary in size and acidity, so results will differ.
- "Barely scald"The blanch is measured by a single split skin, not by a clock. Left longer, fruit this small collapses and the whole point of preserving it whole is lost.
- Stone colander and gold-beater's-skinA stone colander is glazed earthenware or stoneware; any non-reactive colander is the equivalent. Gold-beater's-skin was the ox-gut membrane laid between sheets of gold during beating — the comparison is to something translucent and improbably tough, which is exactly how scalded crab apple peel behaves.
- The last three sentences are a different subjectFrom "For puddings and pies" onward the entry stops describing the preserve and simply praises the fresh fruit used whole in baking, cores and all.
Siberian crabs are generally said to have reached British gardens from north-east Asia in the late eighteenth century, and were planted as much for blossom as for fruit, but their acidity and very high pectin content recommended them to the Victorian still-room hem jjelly its set — the same qualities that give crab apple jelly its set. The entry preserves an older preserving logic: sugar built up in stages over several days, jars left open to let steam escape, a membrane cover, and a weekly inspection with reboiling as the accepted remedy. The insistence on gathering the fruit underripe is genuine orchard knowledge and still holds — pectin and acid are both at their peak just before the fruit mellows, after which, as the author puts it, they go mealy and juiceless.