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Strawberry Jelly
Strawberry jelly may be made with gelatine, of the strawberry juice alone, if tart; or, if sweet and full ripe, with red currant juice or lemon juice added. Heat berries in double boiler till juice is free, mashing them well. For each pint of resulting, strained juice, allow the juice of a small lemon or one-half cup red currant juice, and for each pint of mixed juice, one pound of sugar.
STRAWBERRY SHRUB No. I Dissolve five ounces tartaric acid in two quarts of water and pour it over twelve pounds hulled berries (in earthenware), letting stand forty-eight hours, with plate to keep them down. Strain through flannel bag, then add to juice one and one-half pounds granulated sugar for each pint of juice. Stir till dissolved; bottle; cork and keep in cool place. (Do not seal corks.) Add two and one-half teaspoons of this to each glass of cold water when serving. STRAWBERRY SHRUB No. 2 Make as above up to bottling point, when pour it over ten pounds more of berries; let stand twenty-four hours; strain and add sugar, a pound for each pint. Boil then five minutes, then simmer five more, and bottle.
Three preparations run together here: a gelatine-set strawberry jelly and two versions of strawberry shrub, a concentrated syrup for cold drinks. The jelly paragraph is written as a set of proportions rather than a procedure, so read it through before starting.
- The gelatine is never measuredThe heading says gelatine but the instructions give only juice, acid and sugar proportions. As a working figure, a standard envelope of powdered gelatine (about 2 1/4 teaspoons) sets 2 cups of liquid to a soft spoonable jelly; softened in a little cold juice, then stirred into the hot sweetened juice off the heat. The original leaves this genuinely blank, and any figure is a modern reader's addition.
- Why the currant or lemonStrawberries are low in both pectin and acid. Red currant juice supplies both, lemon only acid. Since this version leans on gelatine rather than pectin for the set, the added juice is there mainly for flavor balance and to keep the sweetness from going flat.
- UnitsA pint is 2 cups. A pound of granulated sugar is about 2 1/4 cups. The proportions are given per pint of strained juice, so measure the juice after straining, not the berries.
- Extracting the juiceThe double boiler is deliberate: gentle heat frees juice without scorching or boiling off the fresh strawberry aroma. Mash thoroughly as it warms, then strain through a jelly bag or several layers of damp cheesecloth. Squeezing gives more juice and a cloudier product.
- Tartaric acidFood-grade tartaric acid is sold for winemaking and baking; five ounces is roughly 2/3 cup. Do not substitute cream of tartar, which is potassium bitartrate and behaves differently. Its role is to draw juice from the fruit and to give the finished syrup the sharp bite that makes it refreshing when diluted.
- Earthenware, and why it mattersTwelve pounds of berries steeping in strong acid for two days will pit and discolor aluminum, copper or cast iron. Use glass, glazed stoneware or food-grade plastic. The plate weighted on top keeps the fruit submerged so the exposed surface does not mold.
- Scale and yieldTwelve pounds of hulled berries is a farm-quantity batch yielding several quarts of syrup. Everything here divides cleanly; a quarter batch is manageable in a home kitchen.
- The unsealed corksThe instruction is not carelessness. Shrub No. 1 is never boiled, so it will slowly ferment and build pressure; a loose cork lets gas escape instead of bursting the bottle. Modern practice is to refrigerate it and treat it as a fresh syrup with a few weeks' life. Shrub No. 2, which is boiled and simmered, keeps better.
- ServingTwo and a half teaspoons per glass of water is a light, barely tinted drink. Most people will want a tablespoon or more; mix one glass to taste before committing to a pitcher.
"Shrub" comes from the Arabic sharāb, "drink" or "beverage" (from the verb shariba, to drink), and the word appears in English in the eighteenth century for a mixture of citrus juice, sugar and spirits. By the time of American cookbooks like this one, the alcohol had largely dropped out and the name attached to a sweet fruit concentrate diluted with cold water, a household soft drink made in summer when berries were cheap and abundant. The use of purchased tartaric acid in place of lemon juice is broadly characteristic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when cheap chemical acids and pure granulated sugar became more reliably available to ordinary cooks and turned fruit preserving into something closer to a formula. That the recipe expects twelve pounds of hulled strawberries at a time, and then ten pounds more for the second version, is a reminder that this was seasonal bulk work: the fruit came in all at once and had to be turned into something that would last past the few weeks of the strawberry season.