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Grape Conserve
To every 5 pounds of grapes, take 3 pounds of sugar, 2 pounds seedless raisins and ½ pound English walnuts. Separate pulp from skins, heat pulp scalding hot, put through colander and sieve, then add skins to pulp with the sugar. Boil slowly for 20 minutes, add the rasins and boil for 15 minutes, then add chopped nut meats and seal.
L. A. M., Indian Head, Sask.
A slip-skin grape conserve of the sort that assumes Concords and a hot afternoon. The method is sound; the gaps are in yield, set and sealing.
- Use slip-skin grapesThe instruction to separate pulp from skins only works with Concord, Niagara or similar labrusca grapes, whose skins pop off under thumb pressure. Table grapes from a supermarket will not cooperate; the whole recipe depends on this variety.
- Why pulp and skins are handled separatelyThe seeds sit in the pulp, the colour and most of the flavour in the skins. Heating the pulp loosens the seeds so a sieve removes them, then the skins go back in for body and colour. Skipping the split gives you a gritty, seedy conserve.
- Quantities scaled downFive pounds of grapes is a large batch. A quarter batch works cleanly: 1 1/4 lb grapes, 12 oz sugar, 8 oz raisins, 2 oz walnuts.
- "English walnuts"Simply the common walnut, named to distinguish it from the native American black walnut, which is stronger and more resinous. Ordinary walnut halves are what is wanted.
- The nuts go in last for a reasonWalnuts turn soft and their tannins darken the preserve if boiled. Stir them in off the heat, or in the last minute, and jar immediately.
- Judging the boilThirty-five minutes total is a guide, not a set point. Conserves are meant to be looser than jelly, but test on a chilled plate: it should mound slightly rather than run. Raisins absorb liquid as it cools and thicken it further.
- "Seal" needs modernisingAt the time this was written, sealing generally meant hot jars and paraffin wax on top. Use current practice instead: sterilised jars, new lids, and a boiling-water bath of 10 minutes for half-pints. Paraffin seals fail and admit mould.
Conserves sit between jam and mincemeat: fruit boiled with sugar, then enriched with dried fruit and nuts, so that a spoonful is closer to a relish than a spread. Grape conserve became a fixture in North American kitchens once Concord grapes, developed in Massachusetts in the mid-nineteenth century, spread through home gardens and roadside arbours; their thick slip skins and seedy pulp all but force the sieve-and-recombine method described here. The Five Roses Cook Book was assembled by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company from recipes sent in by Canadian housewives, and the signature -- L. A. M. of Indian Head, Saskatchewan -- is typical of the book's method. That a prairie contributor was working with grapes, seedless raisins and walnuts says something about how far railway freight had extended a home cook's pantry by the 1910s.