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Preserved Fruit Syrups
With some fruits the juice may be preserved without sugar, as with some grapes and with currants. For syrups to be used for sauces, drinks, frozen desserts, etc., measure juice and add half the amount of sugar. Half this amount of sugar will suffice for an ordinary preserved fruit juice. Bring to boiling point then strain; re-heat; boil five minutes and bottle.
A skeleton formula rather than a recipe for one fruit: it assumes you already have strained fruit juice and want to turn it into a keeping syrup. The proportions are given by volume, so measure juice and sugar in the same cup.
- The ratios, unpackedFor a sauce, drink or sorbet base, use half as much sugar as juice by volume times to make it concrete: 4 cups juice to 2 cups sugar. For "an ordinary preserved fruit juice" the book halves that again, to 1 cup sugar per 4 cups juice that is a lightly sweetened juice, not a pourable syrup.
- Why some fruits need no sugarThe book names currants and some grapes, both high-acid fruits; the sugar in the other versions is largely for flavour and body rather than keeping. The recipe itself gives no reason and names no fruits to avoid.
- Strain, then reheatThe order of operations looks deliberate: bringing the sweetened juice to a boil throws up scum and coagulates proteins, and straining at that point, through damp muslin or a jelly bag, is what gives a clear syrup before the final boil.
- Do not squeeze the bagLet the juice drip. Pressing pulp through the cloth pushes fine sediment into the syrup and tends to leave it cloudy.
- Five minutes is a spoilage boil, not a setYou are killing yeasts and moulds, not making jelly. Longer boiling darkens the colour and dulls fresh fruit flavour, which is the whole point of a syrup for drinks and ices.
- BottlingThe original says only "bottle," with no detail on the bottles or the seal; presumably hot syrup went into hot bottles, sealed at once. Modern practice for shelf storage is to follow current tested canning guidance for fruit juice -- heat-treated bottles processed in a boiling-water bath. Without that, treat it as a refrigerator syrup and use it within a few weeks; watch for cloudiness, gas or a fermented smell.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Expect somewhat more than the volume of juice you started with, less whatever boils off in the five minutes.
Fruit syrups were the utility product of the summer fruit season: whatever juice was left after jelly-making, or fruit too soft to preserve whole, went into bottles to be drawn on all winter for shrubs and lemonades, sauces for puddings, and once home ice-cream freezers were common for water ices and sherbets. The method is a simple one: heat, clarify, sweeten, seal. The recipe draws a distinction between a heavy "syrup" and a lightly sweetened "preserved fruit juice."