Strawberry Jam
INGREDIENTS for 12 pots. -12 pounds of strawberries; to every lb. of fruit allow 1/2 pint of red-currant juice, 14 lb. of loaf sugar. AVERAGE COST, 7d. per lb. pot.
Strip the currants from the stalks, put them into a jar; place this jar in a saucepan of boiling water, and simmer until the juice is well drawn from the fruit; strain the currants, measure the juice, put it into STRAWBERRY JELLY. a preserving-pan, and add the sugar. Select wellripened but sound strawberries; pick them from the stalks, and when the sugar is dissolved in the currant-juice, put in the fruit. Simmer the whole over a moderate fire from to hour, carefully removing the scum as it rises. Stir the jam only enough to prevent it from burning at the bottom of the pan, as the fruit should be preserved as whole as possible. Put the jam into jars, and when cold, cover down.
TIME. to hour, reckoning from the time the jam simmers all over.
SEASONABLE in June and July.
A strawberry jam set with red-currant juice rather than added pectin — the currants do all the setting work, so do not be tempted to leave them out.
- The hingeStrawberries are low in pectin and not especially acid, which is why this recipe borrows both from red currants. Without the currant juice the jam sets poorly, if at all, and tends towards a syrup.
- Currant juiceHalf a pint per pound of fruit is 10 fl oz in Imperial measure, roughly 1 1/4 US cups. Drawing the juice in a covered jar set in simmering water gives a clear juice; a bowl over a pan of water does the same job.
- Sugar quantityThe sugar figure as printed has lost its fraction. Standard practice for this style of preserve is between 1 lb and 1 1/4 lb sugar per pound of fruit; weigh to that ratio rather than to the printed number.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a hard cone and broken up for use. Ordinary granulated or preserving sugar replaces it directly; preserving sugar's larger crystals dissolve more evenly and throw less scum.
- TimingThe printed cooking time has also lost its fractions. Cook to a set instead: begin testing once the jam is boiling steadily, and stop when a spoonful wrinkles on a chilled saucer or the mixture reaches about 104-105C / 220-221F.
- Keeping the fruit wholeStir only enough to stop the base catching, as the recipe says. A wide pan and a hard, short boil preserve the berries better than a long simmer in a deep pan.
- Potting"Cover down" meant sealing the cooled jam under a tied cover of paper — brandied, oiled or gummed tissue was usual, later a waxed disc. Modern practice is to fill sterilised jars while the jam is near boiling, seal at once, and water-bath process if you want long unrefrigerated storage.
- YieldTwelve pounds of fruit fills about twelve 1 lb pots. The proportions scale down cleanly; 2 lb of strawberries with 1 Imperial pint (about 2 1/2 US cups) of currant juice is a manageable domestic batch.
Red-currant juice was the standard Victorian answer to a soft-setting fruit long before commercial pectin was sold in packets: currants ripen alongside strawberries in June and July, are high in both pectin and acid, and contribute a colour that flatters rather than muddies the strawberries. The "average cost, 7d. per lb. pot" line is characteristic of Beeton's household arithmetic, which priced dishes so a mistress could check her housekeeper's accounts. Seasonality here is not a stylistic flourish but a constraint — with no imported fruit, jam-making was a fixed few weeks of summer labour that had to supply the store cupboard for the year.