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Currant Water
Take one pound of red currants and one half pound of raspberries, remove the stems and mash the fruit well with a wooden spoon. Then put it into a preserving kettle with one half pint of water and one half pound of sugar. Stir occasionally until it reaches the boiling point, then strain through a fine sieve. Dissolve one half pound of sugar in a little cold water, and boil to a syrup, add to the fruit syrup, and then stir in one quart of water. Allow to stand until quite cold, then serve.
A two-syrup method: the fruit is cooked with a modest amount of sugar to draw out juice, then a separately boiled sugar syrup is added for sweetness and body. Nothing here is difficult, but the fruit should be barely brought to a boil.
- Do not boil the fruitThe instruction is to stir only until it reaches the boiling point, then strain. Held at a simmer the juice turns cloudy and cooked-tasting. Pull the pan the moment it lifts to a boil.
- Preserving kettleAny wide non-reactive pan of 3 quarts or more. Untinned copper or bare aluminum will react with the acid in currants; use stainless or enameled cast iron.
- Sugar, totalOne pound of sugar in all, split into two half-pound additions, which is about 2 1/4 cups. The result is properly sweet by the standards of the period; cut the second half-pound to 1/2 cup if you want it tarter.
- "Boil to a syrup"Dissolve the second half-pound in about 1/4 cup cold water and boil two to three minutes, until clear and slightly thickened. No candy stage is intended; do not let it reduce to a heavy syrup that will not blend in.
- StrainingA fine sieve gives a slightly cloudy drink. For a clear one, line the sieve with damp muslin and let it drip without pressing.
- FruitFresh red currants have a short summer season; frozen currants work and can go into the pan unthawed. Raspberries are there for aroma more than acid, so a slightly generous half pound does no harm.
- Yield and servingRoughly 1 1/2 to 2 quarts once the syrup and the added quart of water are in. Chill thoroughly rather than pouring it over ice; keep refrigerated and use within three or four days.
Currant water belongs to a long European family of fruit eaux and shrubs, sweetened fruit juices let down with water, which were household summer drinks well before commercial soft drinks existed. Red currants were a staple of American and British kitchen gardens in the nineteenth century precisely because they are too sour to eat out of hand but superb cooked with sugar, and they carry enough natural pectin and acid to make a bright, keeping syrup. The absence of currants from most modern American markets has its own history: the plants were widely banned in the early twentieth century as hosts of white pine blister rust, and the bans were only relaxed decades later, by which time the fruit had largely dropped out of the national repertoire.