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Jellied Tomato Conserve from Fresh or Canned Tomatoes
3 cups cooked Tomato and Lemon 6 level cups (2½ lbs.) Sugar 1 bottle (scant cup) CERTO Scald, peel and crush well about 2½ lbs. fully ripe tomatoes. Take about 4 cups crushed tomatoes and boil hard without cover for 10 minutes to concentrate pulp. Add the juice and grated rind of 1 lemon. Measure 3 cups of mixture into large kettle, add sugar and mix well. Use hottest fire and stir constantly before and while boiling. Boil hard for 2 minutes, remove from fire and stir in CERTO. Skim and pour quickly. If plain tomato flavor is preferred omit the lemon and use only 2½ cups cooked tomato.
For use with meats add ½ teaspoon each of powdered allspice, cloves and cinnamon; may also be flavored to taste with Worcestershire Sauce.
A Certo booklet jam from the era when liquid pectin was new and jars were sealed with paraffin. The method still works; the equipment and the storage advice do not.
- The bottle of CertoThe old bottle held a scant cup, nearer 7 to 8 fl oz. Modern liquid pectin comes in 3 fl oz pouches sold two to a box, so a box of two is a little short of the original volume. Measure rather than guess, and add it off the heat exactly as directed.
- "Hottest fire"This means your largest burner at full power, in a kettle far bigger than the volume suggests. Sugar-heavy mixtures climb the sides when they reach a hard boil, so use a pot of at least 6 quarts.
- The two-minute boil is the hingeA liquid-pectin jam sets from a short, genuine rolling boil followed by the pectin going in off the heat. Boiling after the Certo is added, or letting the boil slacken to a simmer during the two minutes, gives a syrup that never firms.
- Concentrating the pulpThe uncovered 10-minute hard boil reduces about 4 cups of crushed tomato to the 3 cups the recipe needs. Tomatoes vary in water content; measure after boiling rather than trusting the clock.
- Skim and pour quicklyLiquid pectin begins setting within a few minutes of leaving the heat. Have jars hot and ready before you start, skim once, and fill without pause or you will be spooning a set jam into jars.
- Paraffin is obsoleteBooklets of this period assumed a paraffin seal poured over the surface. That method is no longer considered sound, as mould can grow beneath the wax and the seal is not airtight.
- Shelf storage needs a current recipeTomatoes sit right on the borderline for safe home canning, and the variant here omits the lemon that would raise the acidity. Treat this as a refrigerator conserve, eaten within a few weeks, unless you are following a modern tested procedure with bottled lemon juice and a boiling-water process.
- YieldThe recipe gives none; expect roughly 3½ pints, or seven half-pint jars, from the full quantity.
- The spiced versionHalf a teaspoon each of allspice, cloves and cinnamon turns this into a sweet-sharp condiment closer to a chutney. Add the spices with the sugar so they have time in the boil; Worcestershire is best stirred in at the end, to taste.
Certo was among the first commercial liquid pectins, extracted from apple pomace and sold from around 1920, though the date is not firm; the little recipe booklets that came with the bottle taught home cooks that jam could be made with a two-minute boil instead of the long reduction their mothers had used. Tomato conserve itself is older than the pectin. Nineteenth-century American preserving books treated the tomato as a fruit as readily as a vegetable, and tomato preserves, often spiced and eaten with meat, appear in household manuals well before canned tomatoes were common. What is notable here is the alternative in the title: the recipe assumes the reader may reach for a can rather than scald and peel two and a half pounds of tomatoes.