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Grape Conserve
4 lbs. grapes 2 lbs. sugar 1/2 lb. seeded raisins (chopped) ½ lb. English walnuts, cut fine Grated rind and juice of one orange Prepare grapes as you do for canning, then mix all together, boil until quite thick.
Mrs. Allie T. Nicholas.
A conserve is a jam carrying dried fruit and nuts, and this one is built on slip-skin grapes rather than the seedless table sort. A few of the quantities and instructions assume knowledge a 1910 cook had and did not need spelled out.
- "Prepare grapes as you do for canning"Most likely means Concord-type slip-skin grapes: squeeze the pulp out of the skins, simmer the pulp alone until soft and press it through a sieve to remove the seeds, then return it to the reserved skins. Modern seedless grapes will not behave this way and give a thin, one-note conserve.
- The walnut quantity1.5 lb of walnut meats against 4 lb of grapes is a great deal more nut than most conserves carry, and it may be a misprint for 1/2 lb. Treat the printed figure as doubtful rather than authoritative.
- Add the nuts lastWalnuts boiled through a long reduction turn soft and can throw a grey tinge and a bitter edge into the syrup. Stir them in during the final five minutes.
- "Boil until quite thick"Cook to about 220F on a candy thermometer, or until a spoonful chilled on a cold plate wrinkles when pushed. Expect roughly 30 to 45 minutes of steady boiling in a wide pan; a narrow, deep pot will take considerably longer and is more likely to scorch.
- Sugar ratioAt 2 lb sugar to 4 lb grapes this is a low-sugar preserve by preserving standards, so it will set soft and will not keep like a full-sugar jam.
- StorageThe original gives no storage instruction at all. Open-kettle filling and hot sealing, the period default, is not sufficient by current standards. Refrigerate and use within a few weeks, freeze, or follow a current tested water-bath process for grape conserve.
- Orange rindGrate only the coloured zest; the white pith below it is bitter and will not cook out.
A conserve, in the vocabulary of American cookbooks a century ago, was distinct from a jam or a jelly: it carried whole fruit plus raisins, citrus and nuts, and was often served with roast meat and game as well as with bread. Grape conserve in particular depended on the Concord grape, the thick-skinned, seedy, intensely perfumed variety generally credited to Ephraim Bull's Massachusetts breeding work in the mid-nineteenth century, which by 1900 was widely grown on arbors behind ordinary houses. The recipe is signed with a contributor's name, as community-cookbook recipes generally were.