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Sweetbrier Rose Hip Jam
Jean Eliot, Camp Fire Girls Guardian of Portland, Oregon, after reading about edible wild plants decided to experiment with a Sweetbrier Rose Hip Jam. The resulting product turned out a beautiful rose color, very similar to maraschino cherries, and the heavy, red syrup had a distinctive rose taste. It was delicious on hot biscuits and as a basting sauce for baked hams. Each berry stood out whole, plump and smooth, and steam cooking kept the fruits from becoming hard or tough. Here is the recipe: 2 CUPS ROSE HIPS (BEFORE SEEDING) 2 TABLESPOONS LEMON JUICE 2 CUPS SUGAR I CUP WATER Prepare the hips by removing tops and stems and then split them and remove all seeds (the point of an apple-corer does an excellent job). You should have 1 cup of fruit left after cleaning.
Boil sugar and water together for 3 or 4 minutes. Add hips and lemon juice, then cover and let boil for 15 or 20 minutes. The berries should be clear at the end of this time and the syrup thick; if not, boil 5 minutes longer with the cover off. Pour into hot, sterilized jars and seal with paraffin. The later in the year you make this jam, the more lemon juice will be needed to thicken the syrup.
A JOHN SMITH PARTY Memorable in Virginia's early history is John Smith's mandate to the community-"Those that do not work may not eat" and although the formula might be presented indirectly after the manner of the shrewd psychologists of the day, it seems a good point of departure for any sort of cook-out whether of small numbers where everybody tries or wants to do everything, or the large group-up to 200 -where there is much opportunity for the easy going to sluff responsibility and for the "born leader" types to come to a clash over how this or that shall be done. Invaluable for outings that include boys and girls, since each has a non-negotiable job and Mary and Bill will not go for a pail of water and get lost on the longest way home-and since by its terms the girls do not do all the cooking while the boys tease, or the boys exploit their skill in frying and flipping while the girls stand by and giggle.
First plan the menu carefully and list all the work to be done. Be sure to include gathering wood, peeling onions, frying bacon, setting table, serving, clean up and fires out. Have as many jobs as persons. An attractive little meal ticket is given to each-folded, mind you and on the inside is a notation something like this: "Good for food for one supper on September 15th. To validate, holder is invited (shall-is instructed) to keep the fires burning and see that they are properly put out." or "To cash in, holder will fry the bacon and onions for chowder." or "Valid only after holder has toasted 12 slices of bread golden brown on both sides."
Someone is John Smith-the leader, and there might be a Mrs. John Smith to check up on him. The group might first be divided into two sections, i.e. on arrival-one division to gather wood for ten minutes, the other (and smaller) division to spread out provisions so the whole group can work without confusion.
The meal should be ready to serve and all should eat at one time. After the meal those who have worked may sing while the "cleaner uppers" and "fire putter outers" finish their work. This should keep everyone busy and happy.
A tiny-batch preserve that depends almost entirely on the tedium of seeding the hips. Do that job properly and the rest is fifteen minutes at the stove.
- Seed them completelyRose hips contain fine, stiff hairs around the seeds that irritate the mouth and gut, which is why the recipe insists on splitting each hip and scraping it out. The apple-corer tip works; a small melon baller or a demitasse spoon works better. Rinse the cleaned halves before cooking to float away stray hairs.
- What 2 cups becomesTwo cups of whole hips reduces to about 1 cup of cleaned fruit, as the recipe says. With 2 cups of sugar and a cup of water going in, expect something closer to a pint of finished jam than a single small jar. Scaling up is possible, but the seeding time scales with it, and that hand work, not the boiling, is the bulk of the job.
- Which hipsSweetbrier is Rosa rubiginosa, an escaped European hedge rose common in the Pacific Northwest where this was written. Any garden or wild rose hip will do, though the large, fleshy hips of Rosa rugosa are far easier to seed. Never use hips from roses that have been sprayed with systemic insecticide, fungicide or aphid treatment.
- Timing and the vitamin CThe 15 to 20 minutes covered boil is what the recipe credits with keeping the hips plump rather than hard or tough. Prolonged boiling also costs a good deal of the vitamin C the fruit is known for, so treat this as a flavour preserve rather than a nutritional one.
- Lemon juice is the pectin triggerRose hips carry decent natural pectin, but it needs acid to set. The note about late-season hips is sound: as hips ripen and soften through autumn, pectin degrades, so add a third and fourth tablespoon of lemon juice if the syrup refuses to thicken.
- Skip the paraffinWax seals were standard in the 1940s and 50s and are no longer recommended for any preserve; the wax cracks and shrinks and mould grows underneath unseen. Fill a hot sterilised half-pint jar, seal with a two-piece lid and either refrigerate and use within a month or process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.
- ServingGood on hot biscuits and, as the recipe says, as a basting sauce for baked ham, thinned with a little of its own syrup. The rose flavour is delicate.
Sweetbrier hips belong to a wartime and postwar enthusiasm for foraged food. British authorities organised the collection of wild rose hips for syrup during the Second World War, when citrus imports failed and hips were found to be unusually rich in vitamin C. This entry sits in that atmosphere: a Camp Fire Girls guardian reads up on edible wild plants, tries something on her own, and her result is passed along by name. Camp Fire Girls, founded in 1910 as a girls' counterpart to the Boy Scouts, put woodcraft and outdoor cookery at the centre of its program, and a hedge-row jam fits that mission better than any tested formula from a fruit-pectin company. The comparison to maraschino cherries is a period reflex -- to a mid-century American reader, that was the reference point for anything glossy and rose-red.