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Dried Garden Currants
Pick just before ripe; stew without crushing in a little sugar; spread on plates, with sugar strewn thickly over, and dry in the sun. To be eaten as they are as a relish, or as confection with desserts. May also be soaked over night and stewed for sauce.
A sun-preserving method for fresh currants that produces something between a candied fruit and a raisin. The whole thing hinges on keeping the berries intact, so treat every step as an exercise in not stirring.
- Which currantThese are garden currants, Ribes rubrum or its white form, picked fresh from the bush. They are unrelated to the dried "currants" sold in boxes, which are Zante grapes. Red currants are the usual choice; white are sweeter and dry paler.
- Pick just before ripeUnderripe fruit holds more pectin and acid, which is likely why the direction specifies it: firmer skins are less apt to burst in the pan. Fully ripe currants are far more prone to collapsing.
- "A little sugar"The original gives no quantity. A workable reading is 2 to 3 tablespoons per pound of fruit, just enough to draw a syrup and keep the pan from scorching; note the recipe adds more sugar on the plates afterwards, so keep the stewing sugar light.
- Stew without crushingBring the pan barely to a simmer and hold it a few minutes only, shaking rather than stirring, until the skins go glossy and slack. A spoon dragged through the fruit will split it and the batch turns to sauce.
- Drying in the sunSun-drying wants several consecutive days of hot, dry, breezy weather and a screen or cheesecloth tent over the plates against insects. In humid climates it will mould before it dries; a dehydrator at around 135 to 140F, or an oven at its lowest setting with the door cracked, does the same work in a matter of hours.
- The platesUse shallow ceramic or glass, not metal, since currant acid reacts with aluminium and bare iron. Spread the fruit in a single layer so each berry sits in its own patch of syrup.
- StorageDry until the berries are leathery and no syrup weeps when pressed, then pack in jars. Because sun-dried fruit rarely reaches uniform dryness, keep it cool and check for mould in the first fortnight.
- Yield and useThe yield is small: a pound of fresh currants cooks and dries down to only a few ounces. For the sauce mentioned at the end, cover with water overnight and stew as directed.
Garden currants were a fixture of nineteenth-century kitchen gardens in Britain and the northern United States because they crop heavily and tolerate cold, and a heavy crop had to be dealt with at home, which made them a preserver's fruit by default. Sun-drying with sugar is one of the oldest ways to stretch a glut without jars or a stove going all day, and it produces a sweetmeat rather than a preserve, to be eaten from the dish or returned to sauce later. American currant growing was curtailed in the early twentieth century when Ribes was identified as a host for white pine blister rust and several states restricted planting, which is a large part of why the fruit is familiar in European cooking and scarce in American recipes written since.