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Lemon Preserves
May be made of lemon peel, prepared exactly by the above recipe. Put the peel in a preserving kettle and keep covered, while boiling in clear water, till you can run a straw through it. Then throw it into a rich syrup (one pound sugar to one of lemon peel), and boil a long time. Put in a bowl till the next day; then take the syrup (which will be somewhat thin) and boil again till very thick. Pour it over the lemon, and when cold it will be jellied.--Mrs. S. T.
A two-day candied peel in heavy syrup, written in the shorthand of a book that assumed you had just read the preceding orange-preserve recipe. The method is sound; only the measurements and the doneness cues need translating.
- "The above recipe"The instruction refers back to the preceding preserve in the book, whose peel-preparation steps are not given here. Nineteenth-century peel preserves generally began with a long soak in cold water, changed several times, to draw out bitterness; without some such step the finished preserve will be harsh.
- Boiling until a straw passesThis is the reliable test and it still works: the peel is ready when a straw or toothpick slides through with no resistance. Depending on thickness that is 45 minutes to well over an hour of gentle simmering, covered, in plenty of fresh water.
- One pound to one poundEqual weights of sugar and drained peel, measured on a scale, not by volume. A pound of sugar is about 2 1/4 cups; a pound of peel takes roughly a dozen lemons or more, depending on size and thickness of rind.
- A "rich syrup"Dissolve the sugar in just enough water to make a pourable syrup, about a cup to the pound, before the peel goes in. Adding peel to dry sugar over heat will scorch it.
- "Boil a long time," then boil againThe overnight rest lets the peel absorb sugar while the syrup thins from the water the fruit gives up. On the second day, boil the syrup alone to about 220-222F on a thermometer, which is the setting point the phrase "very thick" is reaching for.
- Why it jelliesLemon peel and pith are heavy in pectin, and the long first boil extracts it. No added pectin is needed, and none was available to this cook.
- Yield and keepingA pound of peel with a pound of sugar gives roughly two pints. Because it is not processed in a canner, treat it as a refrigerator preserve and use it within a few weeks, or pack it into jars and process by current instructions.
- ServingEat it as a sweet preserve, with tea and plain cake; it also chops into fruitcake and steamed puddings.
Preserving citrus peel in syrup is one of the oldest sugar confections in European cookery, descended from the medieval and Renaissance apothecary's practice of candying rinds and roots to keep them, and it survived in Anglo-American household books long after sugar stopped being a luxury. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and usually dated to 1878, though copyrighted in 1877, from contributions by named and initialed housekeepers, is full of this kind of chained recipe -- "prepared exactly by the above recipe" -- because the book reads as a sequence of related preserves rather than as standalone entries. The attribution to "Mrs. S. T." reflects the volume's method of crediting the many women whose household receipts it gathered.