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Pickled Blackberries
One pound sugar, one pint vinegar, one teaspoonful powdered cinnamon, one teaspoonful allspice, one teaspoonful cloves, one teaspoonful nutmeg. Boil all together, gently, fifteen minutes, then add four quarts blackberries, and scald (but not boil) ten minutes more. The spices can be omitted, if preferred.--Mrs. W.
A sweet spiced vinegar syrup poured over berries and barely heated — closer to a European Essigfrüchte than to a cucumber pickle. Two things decide whether it works: the temperature of the second cooking and how you store it.
- The hinge: scald, do not boilOnce the berries go in, hold the syrup just below a simmer. A true boil bursts the drupelets and you end up with seedy jam rather than whole pickled fruit.
- Quantities in modern termsOne pound sugar is about 2¼ cups; one pint vinegar is 2 cups. Four quarts of blackberries is roughly 5 to 6 lb.
- Vinegar strengthNineteenth-century household vinegar varied widely in acidity. Use a standard 5% cider or white wine vinegar; anything labelled below that will leave the syrup weak and the keeping quality poor.
- SpicesGround spices in this quantity will cloud the syrup and settle as grit. For a clear result use whole spices — a 2-inch cinnamon stick, a teaspoon each of allspice berries and cloves, a quartered nutmeg — tied in muslin and lifted out at the end. The recipe's own note that they may be omitted is worth taking seriously with very fragrant berries.
- StorageThe recipe gives no sealing instructions. Treat it as a refrigerator pickle: cool, cover, and keep chilled for up to a month. For shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested water-bath process for pickled fruit rather than guessing at it here.
- YieldSeveral pints, depending on how much the berries give up. The syrup will be thin at first and thickens as it cools and the fruit releases juice.
- How it was eatenSweet pickled fruits of this type were generally served cold in small quantities alongside roast or cold meats, in a role closer to chutney or cranberry sauce than to a dessert preserve.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, is full of recipes signed with initials only, as this one is. Sweet pickled fruit of this kind — sugar, vinegar and the standard four spices of cinnamon, allspice, clove and nutmeg — was a fixture of American and English larders through the nineteenth century, applied more or less interchangeably to peaches, damsons, cherries, grapes and blackberries. The technique is older than canning: sugar and acetic acid together do the preserving, and the brief scald is meant only to heat the fruit through, not to sterilize it. Blackberries were widely gathered wild in Virginia as well as grown, which may help explain the generous four quarts.