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To preserve grapes
Take close bunches whether white or red, not too ripe, and lay them in a jar. Put to them a quarter of a pound of sugar candy, and fill the jar with common brandy. Tie them up close with a bladder, and set them in a dry place.
A fruit-in-spirit preserve of the simplest kind: the alcohol does all the work, and the sugar candy is there for flavour and body rather than preservation. The one thing that matters is that the grapes stay fully submerged in brandy — any fruit sitting above the liquid will spoil and taint the jar.
- Sugar candyCrystallised sugar in large lumps, sold in white or amber form. Rock candy or plain granulated sugar both work; a quarter of a pound is a generous half-cup of granulated sugar. It dissolves slowly in spirit.
- Jar size is not givenThe recipe fixes the sugar but not the vessel, so the sweetness depends entirely on what you use. A quarter-pound of sugar to a quart jar gives a lightly sweetened result; in a half-gallon jar it is barely sweet at all. Scale the sugar to the jar rather than the reverse.
- "Common brandy"Ordinary, undistinguished brandy, likely stronger than the 40% ABV standard bottling sold today, though the strength of cheap spirit varied. Use the plainest brandy you are willing to drink; 40% is sufficient to keep the fruit, but do not dilute it or substitute a fortified wine.
- Tie them up close with a bladderA pig's or ox bladder, soaked, stretched over the jar mouth and tied, shrinking as it dried into a tight skin. A modern screw-top or clamp lid does the same job. Avoid bare metal lids in contact with the liquid over long storage.
- Not too ripeUnderripe grapes hold their skins and stay firm in spirit; fully ripe ones slump and cloud the brandy with pulp. Pick close, unblemished bunches, leave them on the stem as instructed, and discard any split or bruised berries before they go in.
- TimingGive the jar at least a month in a cool dark cupboard before touching it, and longer is better — three months lets the brandy take on the grape flavour and the fruit take on the spirit. Kept submerged and sealed, it will hold for a year or more.
- ServingThe grapes go with cold meats, cheese or ice cream, a few berries at a time; the brandy left behind is the better half of the bargain and can be drunk as a cordial. A quart jar holds roughly a pound of grapes and serves eight to ten.
Fruit stored in spirit was one of the standard answers to a short season in an era before reliable canning or refrigeration, and grapes — which dry well but do not cook down into a good jam — were an obvious candidate. The method appears in English household books through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries under names like "grapes in brandy" and belongs to the same family as brandied cherries and the French fruits à l'eau-de-vie. Cleaned bladders were a butcher's byproduct used across the kitchen to close jars and pots, and they persisted in domestic recipes long after glass and cork became common. Sugar candy, meanwhile, was a refined and comparatively expensive form of sugar, and calling for a quarter-pound of it in a jar of "common" brandy is the sort of small extravagance that marks a receipt written for a household with a decent store cupboard.