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Sweet Grape Pickle
To seven pounds of grapes allow four pounds of sugar and one quart of vinegar. Tie spices in a thin bag and cook with the syrup. Pour the latter, when thick and boiling, on the grapes. Remove, re-heat, and pour again over the fruit for two successive days, then seal.
A classic three-day sweet pickle, in which the syrup is poured off, reboiled and returned to the fruit so the grapes take up sugar gradually instead of collapsing. The method is sound; the storage instruction is the part that needs updating.
- The hinge: don't boil the grapesThe grapes are never cooked in the syrup. Boiling syrup is poured over them and drained off again each day, which firms the skins and draws sugar in slowly. Simmering the fruit directly turns it to mush and splits every skin.
- Which grapesThe method suits a slip-skin American grape, of which the Concord is the most likely candidate, and firm, slightly underripe fruit will hold up best, though the recipe specifies neither. Seedless table grapes work but give a blander, softer pickle; with Concords, expect to strain seeds out at the eating stage or halve and seed them first.
- Vinegar strengthNineteenth-century cider vinegar varied widely. Use a standard 5 percent acidity cider or white wine vinegar; anything labelled below 5 percent should not be used for preserving.
- The spice bagNo spices are named, which was normal shorthand. The usual sweet-pickle mix for fruit is stick cinnamon, whole cloves and whole allspice, perhaps a blade of mace, roughly two tablespoons total tied in muslin for this quantity.
- Quantities and yieldSeven pounds of grapes with four pounds of sugar and a quart of vinegar makes a large batch; the exact number of pint jars will depend on how tightly the fruit packs and how much syrup is absorbed. Scaling down by a third is easy and keeps the ratios intact.
- Sealing"Seal" here means open-kettle canning: hot fruit into hot jars, lid on, left on the shelf. That is no longer considered adequate, since the jars are never brought to a verified temperature and the finished pH of a fruit-and-vinegar syrup is not predictable. Follow a current tested recipe for water-bath processing times, or keep the pickle in the refrigerator and eat it within a couple of months.
- ServingSweet grape pickle is a condiment, not a dessert. It belongs beside cold roast meats, ham or game, in the same role as cranberry sauce or spiced peaches.
Sweet spiced fruit pickles ran through American cookery from the early nineteenth century onward, and grapes joined peaches, pears, cherries and crabapples on the same three-day syrup treatment. The fruit is most likely a slip-skin American grape such as the Concord, generally credited to Ephraim Wales Bull of Concord, Massachusetts, who selected it around 1849; hardy, heavy-cropping and widespread in Northern gardens by the time books of this sort were being written. A household with a grape arbour faced a short, concentrated harvest, and firmer, less ripe fruit suited pickling better than jelly-making. The result was a sharp-sweet relish for the cold meats that featured heavily on the nineteenth-century supper table.