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Cherry Jam
4 level cups (2 lbs.) PITTED AND CRUSHED Cherries ¼ cup Water 71/2 level cups (34 lbs.) Sugar 1 bottle (scant cup) CERTO Sour cherries give finest flavor.
Pit and crush well about 2½lbs. fruit. Measure crushed cherries into large kettle and add water.
Tie 3 tablespoons pits in cloth and crush with hammer. Place with cherries to increase flavor, stir until boiling, cover kettle, simmer 10 minutes, then remove pits. Proceed as below.
Grape or 4 level cups (2 lbs.) Cooked Fruit 7 level cups (3 lbs.) Sugar ½ bottle (scant 1/2 cup) CERTO
A liquid-pectin jam from the Certo era, when the pectin bottle rather than the cook's judgment set the timing. The proportions are fixed by the pectin chemistry and should not be adjusted.
- The method the page omits"Proceed as below" refers to the standard liquid-pectin sequence: add the sugar, bring to a full rolling boil that cannot be stirred down, boil hard exactly one minute, remove from heat, stir in the Certo at once, skim, and stir gently for about five minutes to stop the fruit floating. Total boiling after the sugar goes in is one minute, not the long reduction of a no-pectin jam.
- About the crushed pitsCracked cherry kernels contain amygdalin, which yields hydrogen cyanide. The three tablespoons here are tied in cloth, simmered briefly and lifted out, and the practice was routine for the almond-like noyau note, but the step is purely for flavor and can be left out with no effect on the set. A drop of almond extract at the end gives the same character.
- Sugar is structuralLiquid pectin will not gel without the full sugar weight and the fruit's acidity. Reducing the sugar produces cherry syrup, not jam. If less sugar is wanted, a recipe formulated for low-methoxyl or no-sugar-needed pectin is the only route.
- Level cups, and crushed not pureedCups are measured level, and the yield depends on it. Crush the pitted cherries with a potato masher so the fruit stays in shreds; a blender or processor breaks the pieces down and the jam loses texture.
- Sour cherriesThe recipe is written for tart varieties such as Montmorency, which carry both the acid the pectin needs and the flavor. Sweet cherries are lower in acid; a tablespoon or two of lemon juice compensates.
- SealingCerto pamphlets of this period finished jars with melted paraffin. That method is obsolete and prone to mold and seal failure. Fill clean hot half-pint jars, leave a quarter inch of headspace, and process in a boiling-water bath, or simply refrigerate and use within a few weeks.
- YieldThe page as printed gives no yield; by volume the batch works out closer to eight or nine cups of finished jam, and booklets of this era counted in six-ounce glasses rather than eight-ounce jars. Use a kettle of at least eight quarts; a jam this size climbs sharply at the rolling boil.
Certo was liquid apple pectin, sold with small recipe booklets like this one, and it changed home preserving more than almost anything else of the period. Before commercial pectin, jam-makers boiled fruit down until enough of its own pectin concentrated to set, which darkened the color, cooked out the fresh flavor and lost a good deal of volume to evaporation. A one-minute boil produced brighter, fruitier jam and noticeably more jars per pound of fruit, which is why the booklets advertised yields so prominently. The trick of tying cracked pits in a cloth belongs to an older tradition entirely: cherry, peach and apricot kernels were long used across Europe for the bitter-almond flavor called noyau, and the practice survived into printed twentieth-century recipes well after its chemistry was understood.