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Sliced Lemon Preserves
Take large, firm lemons, not quite ripe, cut in slices one-quarter inch thick, and take out the seed. Soak in brine a week. Then soak several days in clear water, changing the water twice a day. When all the salt and the bitter taste are extracted, weigh the lemons and boil till tender enough to pierce with a straw. Make a thin syrup, allowing one pound of sugar to each pound of fruit. Put the lemons in and let them simmer slowly a good many hours. Pour into a large bowl and let it remain there several days. At the end of that time strain the syrup (which will have become thin), put the lemons in it again, and boil till they jelly. When cool put in a glass jar with a screw top. The same recipe may be used for oranges.--Mrs. S.T.
A long, slow candying of lemon slices that runs over roughly two weeks, most of it unattended soaking and resting. Nothing about it is difficult, but the brine and the repeated rests are doing specific work and cannot be shortened much.
- The brine is unspecifiedThe original gives no salt-to-water ratio, which is the one genuinely ambiguous measurement here. A strong brine is the usual reading for drawing bitterness out of peel; if you follow this, keep the jar of brining fruit refrigerated rather than at room temperature for the week.
- Why the salt at allSalt appears to speed the removal of the bitter compounds in pith and peel compared with plain water, which is why the days of fresh-water changes follow rather than replace it. Taste a slice before you move on: if it is still harsh, keep changing water.
- Firm and not quite ripeUnderripe lemons hold their slices through hours of simmering and carry more pectin in the pith and membranes, which is what makes the syrup eventually jelly. Thick-skinned fruit works better than thin-skinned juicing lemons.
- Pierce with a strawA broom straw was the standard doneness probe. A toothpick or cake tester does the same job, and the peel should offer no resistance before sugar goes anywhere near it, because sugar sets the peel and it will never soften afterward.
- Thin syrup, pound for poundWeigh the drained fruit, take an equal weight of sugar, and dissolve it in enough water to cover the slices comfortably. The syrup thins over the resting days because the fruit gives up water into it, which is exactly what should happen.
- A good many hours means lowHold the pan at a bare simmer, barely trembling. A hard boil at this stage breaks the slices apart and drives the syrup to the setting point long before the peel has finished absorbing sugar.
- The rest is not optionalLeaving fruit and syrup together for several days lets the sugar concentration equalize slowly through the peel. Rushed candying gives you tough slices in thick syrup instead of translucent ones.
- Boil till they jellyThe final boil is done when the syrup reaches about 220F, or when a spoonful cooled on a chilled plate wrinkles. Watch it closely; a citrus syrup this concentrated goes from setting to caramelizing in a couple of minutes.
- JarsThe original says to jar the preserve when cool, in a glass jar with a screw top. Current practice is to fill sterilized jars and process them in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes, or simply keep the finished preserve in the refrigerator and use it within a few months.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions signed with initials like the "Mrs. S.T." here, belongs to the era when a Virginia household bought lemons by the box and then had to find ways to hold them. Preserving whole or sliced citrus in heavy syrup was the answer, and it descends from a much older English tradition of wet suckets and candied peel, where the fruit itself, rind and all, was the delicacy rather than a flavoring. The fortnight of soaking, simmering and standing assumed a kitchen where someone was passing the stove several times a day anyway. The closing line offering the same treatment for oranges is characteristic of the book, which repeatedly hands the cook a method and trusts her to apply it.