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To Dry Strawberries
Spread the berries on plates, sprinkling sugar over them and placing in the sun, protecting with netting as for apples. For Strawberry Soufflé, Gelatine, Fritters, etc., see Introductory Recipes and other fruits.
BLACKBERRY JAM No. I Take equal weight of blackberries and currants, adding pound for pound of sugar (and fruit); no water; cooking slowly together till sugar is dissolved, when boil fast for thirty minutes.
BLACKBERRY JAM No. 2 If blackberries alone are used take but three-fourths pound of sugar to each pound of fruit and proceed as above.
Three short procedures run together here: sun-dried strawberries, and two blackberry jams that differ only in whether currants are in the pot. The jams are straightforward preserving arithmetic; the drying instruction assumes a climate and a back garden that most readers no longer have.
- "As for apples"The netting reference points back to the book's apple-drying entry; the netting is there to keep flies and wasps off the fruit. The particulars of that entry are not repeated here.
- What sun-drying needsReliable results want several consecutive days above roughly 85F with low humidity and moving air. In a damp or cool summer the berries ferment or mould before they dry. A dehydrator at 135F, or an oven on its lowest setting with the door propped, does the same job in 8-12 hours.
- Slice themWhole strawberries dry very slowly because the skin resists moisture loss. Halved or quartered berries, cut side up, dry evenly; the sugar draws out juice and helps set a tacky, leathery surface rather than a hard shell.
- Storing dried berriesThey should be pliable and no longer sticky-wet in the centre. Pack loosely in a jar for a week and shake daily to even out residual moisture; if condensation appears on the glass, they need more drying time.
- Jam No. 1, the pectin logicCurrants are the point. Blackberries are low in pectin and only moderately acidic, and currants supply both, which is why this version takes a full pound of sugar per pound of fruit and still sets. Thirty minutes at a hard boil is a long time by modern standards -- start testing for set at 15 minutes on a chilled saucer.
- Jam No. 2, the lower sugarThree-quarter sugar with blackberries alone gives a softer, looser preserve that keeps less well. It will want the full boiling time and may still be more of a conserve than a firm jam; a squeeze of lemon juice per pound of fruit improves both set and colour.
- No water is deliberateBoth jams start dry, so the fruit must be crushed a little at the bottom of the pan and the heat kept low until enough juice runs to dissolve the sugar. Rushing this step scorches sugar onto the pan and the burnt taste carries through the whole batch.
- YieldYield depends on how far the jam is boiled down; two pounds of fruit plus its sugar fills several half-pint jars. For shelf storage, current water-bath processing guidance should be followed; the original assumes a cool larder and prompt eating.
Drying was the cheapest preservation a household had, and fruit books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries still printed sun-drying instructions alongside canning because glass jars, sugar and fuel all cost money that sun and a plate did not. Strawberries were the hardest candidate on the list -- too watery and too fragile for a good result -- which is probably why the entry is three lines long and immediately redirects the reader to soufflerry jams that follow show the older preserving habit of pairing a low-pectin fruit with a high-pectin one, letting currants, apples or gooseberries do the setting work. The sliding sugar ratio -- pound for pound with currants, three-quarters without -- is the sort of practical note that assumes the reader already knows what a set looks like on a cold spoon.