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Raspberry and Currant Jam
2 level cups (1 lb.) CRUSHED Raspberries Currants 2 cups (1 lb.) Pulp from Cooked 7 level cups (3 lbs.) Sugar ½ bottle (scant 1/2 cup) CERTO Crush well about 1¾ lbs. ripe currants, add 1/2 cup water, stir until boiling, cover and simmer 10 minutes. Crush about 1/2 pts. raspberries. Strain 2 cups juice and pulp from simmered currants through fine sieve into large kettle, adding 2level cups crushed raspberries. Proceed as below.
A liquid-pectin jam from a Certo booklet, where the fruit preparation is spelled out and the cooking method is left to a shared set of instructions printed elsewhere in the book. The quantities still work; the sealing advice of the period does not.
- Certo is liquid pectinHalf a bottle is measured here as a scant 1/2 cup. Liquid and powdered pectin are not interchangeable: powder goes in with the fruit before the sugar, liquid goes in at the end, off the heat.
- The method the recipe points toThe shared boiling directions are printed elsewhere in the booklet and are not on this page. The usual liquid-pectin procedure of this era: combine fruit and sugar in a very large kettle, bring to a full rolling boil over high heat stirring constantly, boil hard for the stated minute or so, remove from the heat, stir in the Certo at once, then skim and stir gently about 5 minutes before filling jars. Timing that hard boil from the moment the surface cannot be stirred down is the hinge of the whole recipe.
- Kettle sizeThree pounds of sugar plus four cups of fruit will more than double in volume at a rolling boil. Use a pot of at least 8 quarts or it will climb out.
- Currant fruit weightsThe starting weight of currants given in the text is unclear as printed. Work to the yield instead: simmer currants with the half cup of water until soft, then sieve and measure out exactly 2 cups of juice and pulp. Roughly 1 3/4 to 2 lb of currants will get you there.
- Raspberry quantityYou need 2 level cups of crushed raspberries, about 1 lb, which is roughly the pint and a half of whole berries the recipe calls for, or three half-pint boxes. Crush them with a potato masher rather than a blender; puree makes a cloudy, seedy jam.
- Do not reduce the sugarLiquid pectin sets only in the presence of a high sugar concentration and adequate acid. Cutting the 7 cups will give you a sauce, not a jam. For a lower-sugar version, a modern low-methoxyl or no-sugar-needed pectin is required.
- SealingBooklets of this period finished with a layer of melted paraffin poured over the jam. That method is no longer considered sound, as the wax can shrink or crack and admit mould. Fill clean hot half-pint jars to within 1/4 inch of the rim, apply two-piece lids, and process 10 minutes in a boiling-water bath.
- YieldAbout 10 to 11 cups, or ten to eleven half-pint jars.
Certo was one of the first commercial fruit pectins, introduced by Douglas Pectin and later carried by General Foods; it was extracted from apple pomace and citrus peel, the same sources used today. Its selling point was that jam no longer had to be boiled down for half an hour to reach a set, which meant less evaporation, brighter colour and a far larger yield from the same fruit. The company distributed small recipe booklets like this one, and they follow a rigid template: fruit measured by the level cup, sugar by the pound, a single shared boiling procedure printed once and cross-referenced by every recipe. Pairing raspberries with currants is older than the product, though: currants are exceptionally high in natural pectin and acid, and cooks had long added them to soft summer fruit to help a stubborn preserve set.