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Fresh Fig, Blueberry or Huckleberry Jam
4 level cups CRUSHED Fruit and Lemon 8 level cups (31½ lbs) Sugar 1 bottle (scant cup) CERTO mixture into large kettle.
Fresh Fig: Remove stem ends from about 2 lbs. ripe figs and crush well. Add juice of 2 lemons. Measure 4 level cups of Blueberry or Huckleberry: Crush well about 2 lbs. berries. Add juice 2 lemons and grated rind of 1/2 lemon. Measure juice 2 lemons and grated rind of 1/2 lemon. Measure 4 level cups of mixture into large kettle.
A short-boil pectin jam from a Certo promotional booklet, written for cooks who already knew the standard Certo drill. The proportions are the useful part; the method needs filling in.
- Certo is liquid pectinThe bottle called for here held roughly a scant cup. Liquid pectin now comes in 3 fl oz foil pouches, two of which do not equal the old bottle, so follow the fruit-to-sugar-to-pectin ratio printed on the pectin you actually buy rather than scaling this text.
- The sugar weightEight level cups of granulated sugar is about 3 1/2 lb. Do not reduce it: in a short-boil pectin jam the sugar is part of the setting chemistry, not just sweetening, and cutting it gives syrup.
- The missing step orderThe standard Certo sequence is: combine crushed fruit and sugar in the kettle, bring to a full rolling boil over high heat, boil hard exactly one minute while stirring, take it off the heat, stir in the pectin, skim, then jar. Adding the pectin at the start can leave the jam without a set.
- Why the lemonRipe figs are low in acid, which is why the juice of two lemons is what lets the pectin gel and keeps fig jam from tasting flat. Blueberries and huckleberries are already acidic, so there the lemon and rind are working more for flavour and colour.
- Crush, do not pureeCrush the fruit with a potato masher so some texture survives. A blender aerates the fruit and gives a foamy, dull-coloured jam.
- Measure the crushed fruit, not the whole fruitAbout 2 lb of prepared fruit plus the lemon juice should give the 4 level cups the recipe wants; measure after crushing and top up with a little more fruit if you are short.
- SealingBooklets of this era finished jam under a layer of melted paraffin. That practice has been abandoned; use current water-bath canning guidance for half-pint jars, or refrigerate and use within a few weeks.
- YieldAround 10 to 11 cups, or ten to eleven half-pint jars (five to six pints).
Certo was one of the first commercial pectin extracts sold to home cooks, marketed in the United States from the 1910s, and the little recipe books that came with it are often said to have changed jam-making in the decades that followed. Before bottled pectin, preserves were boiled long and hard until the fruit's own pectin concentrated enough to set, which darkened the colour and cooked out much of the fresh flavour; the one-minute boil here is the whole selling point. That also explains the shape of the page: the manufacturer grouped several fruits under a single set of proportions, since the ratio of fruit to sugar to pectin was the thing being taught. Figs and huckleberries both belong to the home-orchard and foraging economy of the period, and huckleberry in American usage often covered wild blueberries as well as true Gaylussacia.