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Unfermented Grape Juice
10 lbs. grapes 1 cup water 3 lbs. sugar Put grapes and water in granite stew-pan. Heat until stones and pulp separate; then strain through jelly-bag, add sugar, heat to boiling-point, and bottle. This will make one gallon. When served, it should be diluted one-half with water.
A straightforward hot-extraction juice, sweetened heavily because it is meant to be cut with an equal volume of water at the table. The whole of its success rests on heating the fruit enough to release the juice without stewing it into jam flavours.
- The granite stew-pan"Granite" or "graniteware" is enamelled steel, chosen because it does not react with fruit acid. Use enamelled cast iron or stainless steel; avoid bare aluminium or copper, which dull the colour and pick up a metallic edge.
- "Until stones and pulp separate"This is the hinge. Bring the crushed grapes to about 185F and hold them there for ten minutes or so, stirring and mashing. A hard boil at this stage extracts bitterness from the seeds and skins and cooks out the fresh grape aroma.
- Crush before heatingThe recipe assumes it, but with only one cup of water to ten pounds of fruit the grapes must be broken up in the pan or they will scorch before releasing anything. Stem them first.
- StrainingLet the bag drip rather than squeezing it. Pressing forces fine pulp through and gives a cloudy juice that throws a heavy sediment in the bottle.
- Tartrate crystalsGrape juice deposits gritty potassium bitartrate as it cools. Chilling the strained juice overnight and pouring it carefully off the sediment before the final heating gives a much cleaner bottle.
- Sugar and dilutionThree pounds of sugar to ten pounds of grapes tastes cloying straight from the bottle, which is deliberate: the finished syrup is intended to be diluted by half. If you plan to drink it neat, use a third of the sugar or none at all.
- BottlingSterilise bottles and closures, fill with the juice at a full boil leaving a half inch of headspace, and seal at once. Grape juice is acidic enough that spoilage, not worse, is the usual risk, but seals fail easily with a plain hot fill; any bottle that does not seal, or that later shows gas, cloudiness or a yeasty smell, should be discarded rather than tasted. Refrigerate after opening.
- YieldOne gallon of syrup, so roughly two gallons once diluted }]},
"Unfermented" is the operative word. The commercial trade in bottled grape juice is generally traced to Thomas Bramwell Welch, a New Jersey dentist and Methodist communion steward who in 1869 applied Pasteur's heating method to Concord grapes in order to supply his church with a sacramental wine containing no alcohol. His son later built the business, and by the turn of the century "unfermented grape juice" had become a fixture of temperance households, church suppers and invalid trays alike. Domestic-science cookbooks of the period print it in the beverage chapter alongside lemonade and barley water, partly on temperance grounds and partly because grapes were abundant and cheap in September and a bottled syrup carried that abundance through the winter.