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Citron Preserves
Cut 1 large citron in small pieces.
Use same weight of citron and sugar, add 1½ pounds raisins and 4 large lemons sliced thin. Cook 2 or 3 hours until clear.
A long-boiled sugar preserve of the plainest sort: equal weights of fruit and sugar, no water, no added pectin, cooked until the pieces turn translucent. Almost everything hinges on knowing which "citron" is meant.
- Which citronIn North American preserve recipes of this period, "citron" often means the citron melon (preserving melon) -- a hard, pale-fleshed watermelon relative grown for preserves -- rather than the fragrant citrus fruit whose peel is candied for fruitcake, though the citrus reading cannot be ruled out here. If it is the melon: peel it, discard the seeds and the soft central pulp, and dice the firm white flesh. If you use citrus citron instead, you are making a different and far more perfumed conserve, and it will not need anything like three hours.
- Weighing"Same weight of citron and sugar" is most naturally read as weighing the prepared flesh after peeling and seeding, then matching it with granulated sugar. Citron melons vary a great deal in size, so weigh the prepared fruit rather than guess.
- The lemonsFour lemons sliced thin, peel and all, are doing real work: their pith and seeds supply pectin, which the melon flesh is low in, and the acid helps keep the syrup from crystallising. Pick out the pips as you slice, or tie them in a scrap of muslin and fish it out at the end.
- No liquid is called forThere is none in the original, and none is needed if you layer the diced citron with the sugar and leave it several hours or overnight; it will draw enough juice to start. Going straight onto the heat with dry sugar risks scorching before the melon gives anything up.
- Why so longTwo or three hours is not an exaggeration for this fruit. Citron melon flesh is dense and stubborn and softens only under prolonged low simmering. Keep it at a slow bubble and stir often once the mass thickens.
- "Until clear" is the doneness testThe cue is visual: the opaque white cubes turn glassy and translucent and the syrup around them thickens and slides from the spoon in a sheet. A jelly thermometer reading around 220F at sea level confirms it, but the clarity of the fruit is the older and better guide here.
- The raisinsA pound and a half is a lot, and they plump and darken the whole batch. Add them for the last 30 to 45 minutes rather than at the start if you want them whole rather than dissolved into the syrup.
- Yield and keepingYield depends entirely on the size of the citron, so expect a variable number of half-pint jars. The recipe gives no sealing instructions. Use a current water-bath processing schedule for high-sugar fruit preserves, or simply refrigerate the filled jars and eat them within a couple of months.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to sell flour, and it drew its contents from Canadian housewives who sent in what they actually cooked — which is why it carries a preserve built around citron melon, a crop grown across the prairies and the American South and valued, it is often said, because it stored for months and cost almost nothing. The melon itself is nearly flavourless and stays firm through long boiling, so it functioned as a carrier for sugar, lemon and spice much as marrow and green tomatoes did in the same era's cookbooks; the resulting translucent cubes were also chopped into mincemeat and fruitcake as a homemade stand-in for imported candied citrus peel. Recipes this terse assume the reader already knows the drill: no water, no pectin, no jar instructions.