Pepper Jam
Drain 1 small can pimientos and force through food chopper. Put in saucepan, add 3/4 cup sugar and 1/2 1/2 cup vinegar, stir until sugar is dissolved and boil gently to 220 degrees F. or until mixture is the consistency of jam. Pour in small sterilized glasses and when cool cover with melted paraffin. If preferred, use 3 sweet red peppers in place of pimientos. Remove seeds, force through food chopper, sprinkle with Salt and let stand 3 or 4 hours. Drain, rinse, and finish as above.
A tiny-batch sweet pepper jam from a luncheon menu, built on canned pimientos and finished at a measured temperature. The one thing to get right is that 220F reading; everything else is bookkeeping.
- 220F is the set point, not a suggestionJam gels at roughly 8F above the boiling point of water, which is 220F at sea level. Subtract about 2F for every 1,000 feet of elevation, and use a thermometer rather than guessing, since this mixture has almost no pectin and thickens only by reduction.
- "1 small can pimientos"The recipe does not say what size. A 4 oz can is the likeliest reading, and a modern 4 oz jar of whole or diced pimientos is a reasonable equivalent. Drain them well or you will boil off the packing liquid before the sugar concentrates.
- Food chopperThe hand-cranked grinder clamped to the table. A food processor pulsed a few times does the same job; aim for a coarse mince, not a puree, or the jam loses all texture.
- The salt step for fresh peppersSalting the ground fresh peppers for three or four hours draws out water so the jam does not take forever to reduce. Rinse thoroughly and squeeze dry, or the finished jam will read as salty in such a small volume.
- Skip the paraffinMelted paraffin over jelly glasses was standard for decades and is no longer recommended: the wax shrinks, cracks and lets mold in beneath a seal that still looks intact. Pot this small batch into a clean jar, cool it, and keep it in the refrigerator, where it will hold for several weeks.
- YieldThe recipe is not written for a pantry shelf. Expect roughly two-thirds to one cup of finished jam, which is one or two small glasses.
- How it was meant to be eatenHow it might be eaten -- A jam like this reads as a condiment rather than a breakfast preserve: with cream cheese on crackers or toast rounds, or alongside cold meats and a cheese course.
Sweet red pepper jams and jellies spread through American cookbooks in the early twentieth century on the back of the canned pimiento, a mild Spanish pepper that became a commercial crop in Georgia in the first decades of the century and turned up in everything from cheese spreads to olives. The can removes the two nuisances of fresh pimientos, peeling and moisture, and leaves only sugar, vinegar and a few minutes of boiling. The alternative given here with fresh sweet red peppers, salted and drained, may well be the older method, though the recipe itself does not say so. The habit of sealing such small glasses with paraffin belongs firmly to the era as well, before pressure canning and tested water-bath times were household knowledge.