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Pineapple, Rhubarb, Peach or Pear Jam
4 level cups (2 lbs.) CRUSHED OR CHOPPED Fruit 1 bottle (scant cup) CERTO Pineapple: Put fruit through food chopper, or chop very fine.
Rhubarb: The "Strawberry" variety gives finest colored jam; peeling and put through coarse Peach or Pear: Peel, remove pits cut in short lengths without chopper, or chop by hand. or seeds and crush well about 3 lbs.
Measure crushed or chopped fruit into large kettle. Proceed as below. Red or Black Currant, Gooseberry or Plum Jam 4 level cups (2 lbs.) CRUSHED Fruit ¼ cup Water 7½ level cups (34 lbs.) Sugar ½ bottle (scant 1/2 cup) CERTO Red or Black Currant or Gooseberry: Crush well about 2 lbs. Plum: Slice, pit and crush well about 2½ lbs.
Measure crushed fruit into large kettle, add water, stir until boiling, cover kettle and simmer ¼ hour. Proceed as below.
A liquid-pectin jam from the era when Certo bottles were sold in a size no longer on the shelf. Two separate recipes share one set of closing instructions, so read the whole page before starting.
- The bottle has shrunkModern liquid pectin is usually sold in 3 fl oz pouches, two to a box, and larger bottles are also still sold, whereas the "scant cup" bottle described here was roughly 8 fl oz. Measure by volume from the printed amount rather than by counting bottles or pouches, and follow the ratio on the pectin you actually have if the two disagree.
- Sugar for the first groupThe sugar quantity for the pineapple, rhubarb, peach or pear jam is missing from this page. The companion recipe uses 7½ cups sugar to 4 cups fruit, which is the standard liquid-pectin proportion of the period; do not reduce sugar in a liquid-pectin recipe, as the set depends on it.
- Weights behind the cups4 level cups of crushed fruit is about 2 lb prepared, which means starting with roughly 3 lb of peaches or pears, 2 lb of currants or gooseberries, and about 2½ lb of plums before peeling and pitting. "7½ level cups" of sugar is about 3¼ lb.
- Simmering the currant groupThe simmer with ¼ cup water runs a quarter of an hour, covered. This softens skins on currants, gooseberries and plums; the first group of fruits gets no water and no pre-cooking.
- How liquid pectin worksThe instructions this page points to are not reproduced here; the standard liquid-pectin method of the period was to bring fruit and sugar to a full rolling boil, boil hard about one minute, remove from the heat, stir in the pectin, then skim and stir roughly five minutes off the heat to keep fruit from floating. The pectin goes in at the end, not the start.
- Rhubarb variety"Strawberry" rhubarb means a red-stalked variety, still sold under that name. Green-stalked rhubarb gives a duller, khaki-toned jam; the recipe's claim is about colour rather than flavour.
- SealingThe sealing instructions are not on this page; if the book directs the paraffin-topping method common in pectin booklets of the period, that practice is now obsolete. Fill sterilised jars, apply two-piece lids and process in a boiling-water bath, or refrigerate and use within a few weeks.
- YieldExpect about 10 to 11 half-pint jars from the full sugar quantity, which is a large batch by current standards. Do not double it; liquid-pectin jams fail when the boil is too deep to come up quickly.
Certo belongs to the moment when pectin left the fruit and arrived in a bottle. Commercial liquid pectin, extracted from apple pomace, was on sale in North America from the 1910s, with the Certo brand spreading through American and then British kitchens across the 1920s, and the maker's little recipe booklets were the vehicle: they promised a one-minute boil in place of the long reduction that traditional jam-making required, and they promised it would set every time. That shift arguably explains the shape of this page. Fruits are grouped not by season or flavour but, it seems, by how much natural pectin and acid they carry, which would be why pineapple, rhubarb, peach and pear share one set of proportions while currants, gooseberries and plums share another. It also explains the sugar, which looks extravagant now: with added pectin the sugar is structural, and the booklets drilled home that exact measurement mattered more than a cook's judgement.