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Siberian Crab Apples, to Preserve Whole
No. 1.--Boil an inch of cinnamon, three or four cloves, and a small piece of whole ginger in a pint of water till it is pleasantly flavoured. Strain it, and make it into syrup by boiling with it for a quarter of an hour a pound of loaf sugar, and let it stand till cold. Put it into a pan, with a pint of Siberian crabs, which have been well wiped with a cloth and pricked with a needle about the stalks, and let all get hot together. Take the preparation off the fire, let it get cold, then heat it again, and repeat this process three times. When the crabs look clear, lift them out, put them into jars, and pour the syrup over them. Put brandy papers over the top, and cover the fruit in the usual way. If more convenient, the syrup may be boiled on three successive days. No. 2.--Take the crabs with an inch or more of stalk, wash them well, and prick them in three or four places round the stalk. Put them into a pan, and pour upon them as much boiling water as will barely cover them. When cold, drain them from the liquor, then boil the liquor with a pound of refined sugar to every pint. When it is thick and clear, pour it upon the crabs, and let them stand in a cool place for twenty-four hours. Put fruit and syrup into a pan, and make both scalding hot. Lift out the fruit, boil up the juice, and pour it upon the crabs. Repeat this process till the fruit looks clear, and be careful in these later boilings to let the syrup get quite cold before it is poured upon the fruit. Put the jam carefully into jars, and cover in the usual way. Time, five or six days. Probable cost, uncertain, Siberian crabs being seldom sold.
Two methods for the same thing: whole crab apples candied slowly in a spiced or plain syrup so they stay intact and turn translucent. Both depend on patience rather than heat.
- The hinge: never boil the fruitThe repeated heat-and-cool cycles are osmotic, not thermal. Each time the syrup is brought up to scalding and then allowed to go cold, sugar migrates into the fruit and water migrates out, so the apple firms and clears instead of collapsing. Bring the pan only to a bare shiver, never a rolling boil, or you will have sauce with skins in it.
- Why the syrup must be cold in method 2Pouring hot syrup onto fruit already partly candied can split the skins. The recipe is explicit that in the later boilings the syrup must be quite cold before it goes on the fruit, and it gives the whole cycle as five or six days.
- Loaf sugarRefined cane sugar sold in a hard cone and broken up with nippers. Ordinary granulated white sugar is the direct replacement, weight for weight.
- A pint of crabsA volume measure, not a weight. Buy or pick by the pound and match syrup to fruit rather than trying to hit the pint exactly.
- Pricking round the stalkNot decorative. The skin of a crab apple is tough and waxy, and three or four needle holes at the stem end let syrup in and steam out so the fruit does not burst. Leave the stalks on, as method 2 says, since they give the preserved fruit its handle.
- The spice infusionAn inch of cinnamon stick, three or four whole cloves and a small piece of whole ginger, simmered in a pint of water and strained before the sugar goes in.
- DonenessJudge by look, not clock: the recipe says to lift the fruit out when the crabs look clear, that is translucent right through.
- Brandy papers and modern storageRounds of paper soaked in brandy, laid directly on the surface to discourage mould, then a covering of paper or bladder tied down. That is a cool-larder technique and offers no seal. Fill hot sterilised jars and process as a current water-bath preserving guide directs, or keep the jars in the refrigerator and eat within a couple of months.
- Yield and useServe the whole fruit alongside cold pork, ham, game or a hard cheese, one or two per plate, with a little of the syrup spooned over.
Siberian crab is the small, long-stalked, cherry-sized apple of Malus baccata and its garden hybrids, brought into British cultivation from northern Asia and planted far more often for blossom and autumn colour than for eating. Raw it is hard and mouth-puckeringly sour, but it is very high in acid and pectin, which is exactly what a preserver wants: the fruit holds its shape through days of candying and the syrup sets bright. Cassell's closing note that the cost is "uncertain, Siberian crabs being seldom sold" is the telling line, and marks this as a recipe for a household with its own tree or a neighbour who had one, in a period when garden gluts were routinely converted into sugar and stored on a larder shelf against the winter. Spiced whole crabs of this kind are often said to have been served as a sharp relish with cold meat rather than as a sweet.