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Crab Apple Marmalade
Cook crab apples and sweet or wild plums separately till soft, when rub through colander and measure. To each three quarts of crab apple allow one quart of the plum. Mix and weigh and allow one pound sugar to each of fruit. Cook slowly and very carefully, that this may not burn, till smooth and thick. Place in marmalade pots and when cold seal as for jelly.
Crab apple and apple, or crabs and quinces may be used together for marmalade or any of the berries, citrus, or other distinctively flavoured fruits. They may be put up at different seasons and combined later.
APPLE AND QUINCE MARMALADE® See Quince Marmalade No. 2.
A pulp-and-sugar preserve of the old school: no added pectin, no thermometer, and no fixed yield. The hinge is heat control, since a thick fruit purée scorches long before it looks done.
- The proportionsThree quarts of crab apple pulp to one quart of plum pulp, then a pound of sugar to every pound of the combined mixture. The quarts are volume of sieved pulp, not of whole fruit; the sugar is weighed against the weighed pulp, so a kitchen scale does the work.
- Crab applesAny small sour Malus will do, ornamental or wild. Cook them whole with a splash of water until collapsing, then sieve; the colander or food mill holds back skins, cores and pips, which is why the original never asks you to peel.
- "Sweet or wild plums"Wild American plums (Prunus americana) are small, tart and astringent, and were free for the picking. Damsons or any tart red plum stand in well; a very sweet supermarket plum will flatten the finished flavour.
- PectinUnderripe crab apples are among the richest common sources of pectin and acid, so the mixture sets on its own. Do not add commercial pectin, and do not cook to a jelly set: marmalade of this kind should mound on a spoon rather than sheet off it.
- Cook slowly and very carefullyUse the widest heavy-bottomed pan you have and keep the heat low once the mixture thickens. Sieved fruit and sugar at 1:1 catches easily and quickly tastes burnt; stir to the bottom and corners with a flat-ended wooden spatula throughout.
- Judging doneIt is ready when a spoon drawn across the pan bottom leaves a channel that closes slowly. The original gives neither a temperature nor a time; how long it takes will depend on pan width and how much water the pulp holds.
- "Seal as for jelly"In books of this period that usually meant a poured paraffin cap, which is no longer considered a safe seal. Fill sterilised jars, apply two-piece lids and process in a boiling water bath by current guidance, or simply refrigerate and eat within a few weeks.
- The combinations at the endThe original suggests crab with apple, quince, berries, citrus or other strongly flavoured fruit, though it gives proportions only for the plum version. It also notes that fruits "may be put up at different seasons and combined later," without saying how the earlier pulp was held.
"Marmalade" originally meant a quince paste - the word traces to Portuguese marmelo, quince - and only in English did it drift toward citrus; American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries kept the older, broader sense of any fruit pulp boiled thick with sugar, which is exactly what this entry describes. Crab apples earned their place in such books by being everywhere and otherwise useless: too sour and too small to eat out of hand, but loaded with the acid and pectin that make a reliable set. The closing instruction, that fruits "may be put up at different seasons and combined later," suggests a preserving household with some latitude in when it worked, though the recipe says no more than that.