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Sauce of Raisins and Currants
Stem and mash a quart of ripe currants and place with them three-fourths pound of brown sugar. When these have come to boiling point and have been skimmed mix in three-fourths pound of seeded raisins or the smaller are seeded raisins. Let all cook together till raisins thoroughly soft, skimming well and stirring after skimming. Let cool and serve as sauce or dessert.
A two-fruit sweet sauce that cooks down in under half an hour. The text is lightly garbled in one clause, and the word "currant" is doing double duty in this section of the book.
- Which currant"Stem and mash a quart of ripe currants" means fresh red or black currants (Ribes), not the dried Zante currants that are actually small grapes. Fresh ones are the only kind you can stem and mash while ripe.
- A quart of currantsMeasured as whole berries, a quart runs somewhere between a pound and a pound and a half (roughly 450-680 g). Frozen currants work and release juice faster.
- Sugar and raisinsThree-fourths pound is 12 oz, about 1 3/4 cups packed brown sugar, and the same weight of raisins is about 2 1/4 cups. The proportions are sugar-heavy by design; currants are very tart and high in pectin.
- The garbled line"three-fourths pound of seeded raisins or the smaller are seeded raisins" is a printing error. The sense is: use seeded raisins, or else the smaller seedless sort. Either is fine today; supermarket raisins are now nearly always seedless.
- Seeded is not seedlessIn period usage "seeded" meant the seeds had been removed, by hand or by machine, from a seeded variety such as muscat. It does not mean the raisins contain seeds.
- TimingBring to a boil, skim, then simmer until the raisins are plump and soft; the recipe sets no clock, but 20 to 30 minutes is a reasonable expectation. Stir often once the raisins go in, since the sugar and currant pectin will catch on the bottom.
- SkimmingSkimming the foam gives a clearer, brighter sauce. The recipe has you skim once the currants and sugar reach the boil and then again as everything cooks together, stirring after each skimming.
- Yield and keepingAbout 1 quart. It thickens considerably as it cools; loosen with a spoonful of water if it sets too stiff. This is not a processed preserve, so refrigerate and use within two weeks.
- ServingGood cold with roast pork, ham or game, or spooned over rice pudding, cake or ice cream.
The raisin is a dried grape, and the pairing of a sharp fresh fruit with a sweet dried one is old kitchen logic: the currants supply acid and pectin, while the raisins supply body and sugar. Recipes of this kind blur the line between condiment and dessert on purpose, and the closing instruction to "serve as sauce or dessert" is characteristic of the period, when the same dish might appear beside cold meat at one meal and in a glass dish at the next. Currant bushes were a fixture of American kitchen gardens until white pine blister rust led several states to restrict their cultivation in the early twentieth century, which is a large part of why the fruit is far less familiar now than it was to this book's readers.