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Cherry Juice and Preserved Syrup
Prepare and cook as for jelly, for the simple juice adding a half-pint of sugar to each quart of juice and for the syrup making an addition of one pint of sugar to each pint of fruit juice.
Two products from one operation: a lightly sweetened drinking juice and a heavier pouring syrup. The book assumes you have already read its jelly method, so the working details are all in that phrase "prepare and cook as for jelly."
- What "as for jelly" meansThe book's jelly directions are not repeated here, but the standard procedure of the period runs: stem the cherries, crush them, add just enough water to keep them from scorching, and heat gently until the fruit collapses and the juice runs freely. Strain through a damp jelly bag or several layers of cheesecloth and let it drip without squeezing; pressing the bag forces pulp through and clouds both juice and syrup.
- Sugar measured by volumeSugar here is measured in the same cups as the liquid, not weighed. A half-pint is 1 cup (about 7 oz / 200 g) and a pint is 2 cups (about 14 oz / 400 g). So the juice runs 1 cup sugar per quart, and the syrup runs cup for cup with the juice.
- The hinge: dissolve, then boil brieflyStir the sugar into the warm juice until it has completely dissolved before the mixture reaches a boil, then boil only a minute or two and skim. Long boiling drives off the fresh cherry aroma and starts pulling the syrup toward jelly, which is not what you want here.
- Which cherriesSour cherries such as Montmorency or Morello give the sharp flavor these proportions are built around. With sweet cherries the cup-for-cup syrup will taste flat, and a tablespoon or two of lemon juice per pint brings it back into balance.
- Do not cook the pitsSome period cherry recipes call for cracking a handful of pits into the kettle for an almond note. Cherry kernels contain amygdalin, which releases cyanide, and there is no reason to include them. Pit the fruit or strain the whole pits out.
- Storage, which the original omitsThere are no sealing or processing instructions here at all. Both the juice and the syrup keep two to three weeks refrigerated in clean bottles, and both freeze well. If you want shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested water-bath canning procedure for fruit juice or syrup rather than improvising.
- YieldRoughly 4 lb of stemmed cherries gives about a quart of strained juice.
- Using itThe syrup dilutes well with cold or sparkling water, an ounce or two to a glass, and also does well over ice cream, pancakes, or rice pudding, and stirred into iced tea.
Fruit syrups occupied a settled place in the American pantry, midway between preserving and pharmacy: the same bottle sweetened a sickroom drink, flavored a soda-fountain glass, and stood in for fresh fruit in winter puddings. Cherry was among the most prized because sour cherries -- the Morellos and, later, the Montmorency that came to dominate American sour-cherry orchards -- carry enough acid to keep their flavor after cooking, where sweet cherries tend to go dull. Books of this kind often organized themselves by fruit rather than by dish, running through jelly, then juice and syrup, then canning and pies, each recipe leaning on the method described just before it. That is why this entry is a single sentence: the reader was not expected to arrive at it cold.