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Syrup of Barberries
Boil a quart of water, throw into it a pound of very ripe barberries picked from the stalks; after boiling up a few times let them infuse till the following day; then boil two pounds and a half of sugar to pearling (see SUGAR BOILING); set the barberries again on the fire, and after boiling them up three or four times strain them; add the juice to the sugar, and put the whole on the fire. Skim the preparation the whole time of boiling, which must be about twenty minutes. When done bottle it. This syrup seldom ferments.
A high-sugar fruit syrup of the old confectioner's kind, where the fruit is infused overnight and the juice is then married to sugar already cooked to a set stage. Two things need translating: the sugar stage, and where to find the fruit.
- Pearling"Pearling" (French perlé) is the stage just past thread, around 220F/105C on a thermometer, when the boiling surface covers itself with fine round bubbles like pearls and a drop drawn between wet fingers forms a short thread. It is only a few degrees above the boiling point of water, so a thermometer is more reliable than the finger test.
- BarberriesThese are the fruit of Berberis vulgaris, small, scarlet, intensely sour and rich in acid. Fresh ones are rare in shops; dried Persian barberries (zereshk) are widely sold and can be soaked, though the flavour is deeper and less bright and you will need less by weight than a pound of fresh fruit.
- QuantitiesA pound of fruit is 450 g and two and a half pounds of sugar about 1.1 kg, roughly 5 1/2 cups. An imperial quart of water is about 1.14 litres; a US quart is about 950 ml.
- The overnight infusionThis is not idleness. Standing draws colour and acid out of the skins in a way that hard boiling will not, and it keeps the syrup clear rather than cloudy with pulp. Cover the pan and leave it at room temperature or, in warm weather, refrigerated.
- StrainingStrain through a jelly bag or a double layer of muslin and do not squeeze or press the fruit, or the syrup will turn muddy. Barberries carry pectin as well as acid, so the drained juice may thicken slightly on standing.
- The twenty minutesTwenty minutes of skimmed boiling is what concentrates the syrup enough to keep. Skim rather than stir, and watch the last few minutes: boiled much beyond this the mixture starts moving toward jelly, which is not what is wanted here.
- KeepingThe claim that it "seldom ferments" rests on sugar concentration and the fruit's own acidity, and it is broadly fair. Still, bottle hot into scalded bottles and keep the opened bottle refrigerated rather than trusting a Victorian larder.
- Using itDilute with cold or sparkling water as a tart cordial, spoon over rice pudding or ices, or use it to glaze roast poultry and game where a sharp red note is wanted.
Barberry was once a hedgerow standby in Britain: the fruit was pickled for garnish, preserved in sugar as a sweetmeat, and reduced to syrups and "cooling drinks" that sat on the boundary between the still-room and the medicine chest. The plant's near-disappearance from American landscapes is documented and deliberate: Berberis vulgaris is an alternate host of wheat stem rust, and organized eradication campaigns in the twentieth century, including a large federal programme in the United States begun during the First World War, pulled it out of farmland by the million; in Britain its removal was piecemeal rather than an organized campaign on the American model. The fruit survives in cookery mainly through Iranian kitchens, where dried zereshk is scattered over rice, and through recipes like this one, preserved in print long after the hedges went.