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Raspberry Syrup
To each pint of strained raspberry juice add one pound of granulated sugar.
Let it stand over night. In the morning boil it for ten minutes and bottle. A spoonful or two in a glass of cold water makes a very refreshing drink.
A two-ingredient fruit syrup that depends entirely on the sugar ratio and on how the juice is drawn. The instructions are complete but assume a pantry culture that expected bottles to keep on a cool shelf.
- Getting the juiceThe recipe starts with strained juice and says nothing about producing it. Crush the berries, warm them gently until they collapse and release liquid, then drain through a jelly bag or a double layer of cheesecloth without pressing, which keeps the syrup clear. Roughly 2 lb of raspberries yields about a pint of juice.
- The ratioA pound of granulated sugar to a pint of juice is about 2 1/4 cups sugar per 2 cups juice by volume. That is a true syrup density, not a lightly sweetened juice, and it is what allows the finished product to keep once opened and refrigerated.
- Standing overnightThe cold soak dissolves the sugar without heat, so the syrup needs only the one short boil. Stir once or twice before leaving it, and keep it covered in a cool place rather than at room temperature in summer.
- Ten minutes at a boilLong enough to dissolve any remaining crystals and drive off a little water, short enough that the fresh raspberry aroma survives. Skim the pink foam as it rises or the bottled syrup will look cloudy.
- Bottling and keeping"Bottle" in period usage meant hot syrup into hot bottles, sealed and set aside. Treat this as a refrigerator syrup instead: fill clean jars, cool, and keep chilled, where it will hold for several weeks. For shelf storage, follow a current tested water-bath processing schedule for fruit syrups.
- Yield and servingA pint of juice with its sugar gives roughly 1 1/2 pints of syrup. "A spoonful or two" in a tumbler of cold water is about 1 to 2 tablespoons in 8 oz; it also works over soda water, on ice cream, or stirred into plain yogurt.
Fruit syrups belonged to the temperance side of the nineteenth-century drinks table, and cookbooks of the period file them among beverages such as lemonades, shrubs and ginger beer as readily as among preserving and canning. Raspberry was often used because the fruit gives up its juice readily, holds its colour, and has enough acid to balance a very heavy sugar load. The same syrup, thinned with water, was also sometimes given to invalids and to children with fevers, a practice generally traced to the older apothecary tradition in which sweetened fruit syrups were both medicine and vehicle for medicine. That the book offers no method for extracting the juice tells you how routine berry-straining still was in a household that expected to put up its own summer fruit.</p>