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Gooseberry Jam (INGREDIENTS To every lbs)
- INGREDIENTS. -To every 8 lbs. of red, rough, ripe gooseberries allow 1 quart of red-currant juice; 5 lbs. of loaf sugar. AVERAGE COST per lb. pot, 6d.
Have the fruit gathered in dry weather, and cut off the tops and tails. Prepare 1 quart of red-currant juice, the same as for red-currant jelly; put it into a preservingpan with the sugar, and keep stirring until the latter is dissolved. Keep it boiling for about 5 minutes; skim well; then put in the gooseberries, and let them boil from 1/23 to hour; then turn the whole into an earthen pan, and let it remain for 2 days.
Boil the jam up again until it looks clear; put it into pots, and when cold, cover with GOOSEBERRY JAM. oiled paper, and over the jars put tissuepaper brushed over on both sides with the white of an egg, and store away in a dry place. Care must be taken in making this, to keep the jam well stirred and well skimmed, to prevent it burning at the bottom of the pan, and to have it very clear.
TIME.-5 minutes to boil the currant-juice and sugar after the latter is dissolved; from 1/2 to 3/4 hour to simmer the gooseberries the first time, hour the second time of boiling.
SEASONABLE. - Make this in June or July.
Gooseberry Jam, White or Green. INGREDIENTS.-Equal weight of fruit and sugar, 1 lb. of fruit is the ordinary allowance for a 1 lb. pot. AVERAGE COST per pot, 6d.
Select the gooseberries not very ripe, either white or green, and top and tail them.
Boil the sugar with water (allowing 1/2 pint to every lb.) for about hour, carefully removing the scum as it rises; then put in the gooseberries, and simmer gently till clear and firm: try a little of the jam on a plate; if it jellies when cold, it is done, and should then be poured into pots. When cold, cover with oiled paper, and tissue paper brushed over on both sides with the unbeaten white of an egg, and stow away in a dry place.
TIME.-hour to boil the sugar and water, hour the jam.
SEASONABLE. - Make this in June.
Two related jams sit together here: a red gooseberry jam set with red-currant juice, and a plain white or green gooseberry jam made from a sugar syrup. Both rely on gooseberries picked slightly under-ripe, which is where their pectin and acid come from.
- The hinge: pick them under-ripeThe hinge in the second recipe: pick them under-ripe -- Gooseberries lose pectin and acid as they soften, and the white or green version is explicit about choosing fruit "not very ripe". The red version, by contrast, asks for ripe fruit and leans on the added currant juice for its set; fully ripe dessert gooseberries alone tend to give a syrupy jam that never sets properly.
- Judge the set by temperature, not the clockThe stated boiling times in the original are unreliable guides on a modern hob. Work to 105C/221F on a sugar thermometer, or use the plate test the second recipe describes: a spoonful chilled on a cold saucer should wrinkle when pushed.
- Sugar proportionsThe red version uses 5 lb sugar to 8 lbs fruit plus a quart of currant juice, which is low by modern standards and gives a softer, more tart preserve that keeps less well. The white or green version uses equal weights of fruit and sugar, which is the safer ratio for storage.
- "Loaf sugar" and "preserving-pan"Loaf sugar was refined white sugar broken from a cone; ordinary granulated or preserving sugar is the equivalent. A preserving pan is simply a wide, heavy, unlined-brass or stainless pan with plenty of headroom, wide enough to let steam escape quickly.
- The two-day restStanding the boiled fruit in an earthenware bowl for two days most likely lets the sugar penetrate the whole berries so they stay intact instead of collapsing, though the book does not say why. Cover it and keep it cool.
- Topping and tailing"Tops and tails" are the dried flower remnant and the stalk. On 8 lbs of fruit this is a long job with scissors, and skipping it leaves woody specks throughout the jam.
- Covering the potsOiled paper and egg-white-brushed tissue were the period's standard covering, though not a truly airtight seal. Use sterilised jars and metal lids instead, filling while the jam is still near boiling and sealing at once; the red jam, being low in sugar, is better kept in the refrigerator once opened.
- YieldThe book's own rule of thumb is 1 lb of fruit per 1 lb pot. The red recipe, with its currant juice and sugar, will fill rather more than eight pots; expect roughly ten to twelve 450 g jars.
- Red-currant juiceThis is simply currants heated gently until they burst and the juice strained off, as for currant jelly. An imperial quart is about 1.1 litres, and you will need several pounds of currants to get it.
Gooseberries were one of the great enthusiasms of nineteenth-century British gardening: northern industrial towns ran competitive gooseberry clubs where growers showed monstrous single berries, and dozens of named varieties, red, white, green and yellow, were in circulation. That variety is why Mrs Beeton's book carries several gooseberry jams rather than one, distinguishing the rough red sorts from the smooth whites and greens. The addition of red-currant juice to the red jam does two jobs at once, deepening the colour and supplying extra pectin and acid, though ripe gooseberries carry usable pectin of their own and other period recipes set them without any currant juice at all. The seasonal note is the practical point: gooseberries came and went in June and July, and a household that wanted them in February had to put them up in sugar while they were on the bush.