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Stewed Blackberries
Wash and stem the blackberries; add a little water and stew until tender. Just before they are done sweeten to taste. Some cooks thicken the juice with a little cornstarch thinned in water. If this is done the blackberries must boil for an extra minute or two until the cornstarch is cooked.
A compote in all but name, and one of the shortest recipes in the book. The only real decisions are how much water, how much sugar, and whether to thicken.
- "A little water"For 4 cups of blackberries, 1/4 cup water is enough; the berries release a great deal of juice as they heat. More than that gives you thin syrup rather than fruit.
- Sweeten last, and here is whySugar added early firms the skins and slows the berries breaking down. Added in the last two or three minutes it dissolves in the hot juice without toughening anything. Start with 1/3 cup per quart of fruit and taste.
- Cooking timeThe original gives none. Ripe cultivated blackberries are tender in 5 to 8 minutes at a bare simmer; wild ones with tougher skins may want 10. Stop while the berries still hold their shape.
- Cornstarch proportionsThe book assumes you know them: about 1 teaspoon cornstarch slaked in a tablespoon of cold water per cup of juice. The extra minute or two of boiling is not optional, since cornstarch that has not been cooked out tastes raw and starchy and may not thicken properly.
- SeedsBlackberry seeds are hard and numerous. If that matters, press the finished fruit through a sieve and thicken the strained juice instead, which turns this into a sauce for pudding or ice cream.
- Yield and servingA quart of berries makes roughly 3 cups stewed, enough for four. Serve warm or cold with cream, or over sponge cake or hot biscuit. It keeps four or five days covered in the refrigerator.
- Filed under candyWhatever the reason for the placement, do not cook this to a candy stage; it is meant to stay soupy.
Stewed fruit was a mainstay everyday dessert in American home cooking well into the twentieth century: cheap, fast, and possible with whatever the garden or hedgerow gave up that week. Blackberries were often gathered rather than bought, and many older books treat them casually and give no quantities at all. Cornstarch became a widely available household thickener in the United States over the second half of the nineteenth century, used alongside arrowroot and flour in fruit sauces and pie fillings.