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Cherry Conserve
3 pints pitted sour cherries 23/3 cups sugar 1 pint black raspberries
Combine all the ingredients, and cook until thick and clear.
Three ingredients and one sentence of method, which puts all the weight on judging the finish. A few notes on the garbled sugar measure and on what "thick and clear" actually means.
- The sugar quantity"23/3 cups" is a typesetting casualty. 2 2/3 cups is the likeliest reading, though the original figure cannot be recovered with certainty. At that level it is a fairly lean ratio against 4 pints of fruit, so expect a soft, loose conserve rather than a firm jam.
- Sour cherriesMontmorency or another tart pie cherry, not sweet Bings — the acid is doing structural work here as well as flavour. Frozen pitted sour cherries work directly; drain off nothing, the juice is wanted.
- Black raspberriesBlack raspberries (Rubus occidentalis) are not blackberries. They are smaller, seedier and drier, and are generally reckoned to carry more pectin. Blackberries will substitute but may thin the set slightly.
- Volume to weight3 pints of pitted sour cherries is roughly 2 1/4 lb; 1 pint of black raspberries about 12 oz. Useful if you are buying frozen fruit by the bag.
- "Thick and clear"The period test is the jelling point: 220F at sea level, or a spoonful that sheets off the edge rather than dropping in separate beads. Reckon on 25 to 40 minutes at a steady boil in a wide, heavy pan.
- ScorchingCherry juice and sugar catch quickly once the mixture reduces. Use the widest pan you have, stir across the bottom regularly, and lower the heat in the last few minutes.
- Yield and keepingSomewhere in the region of four to six half-pint jars, depending on how far it is reduced. The book assumes open-kettle filling, which is no longer considered adequate for shelf storage — either refrigerate and use within a month, or process filled jars by a current water-bath canning procedure.
A conserve, in the vocabulary of American preserving books of this era, meant a jam made from two or more fruits, usually with citrus, raisins or chopped nuts folded in; the word marked it out from a single-fruit jam and from a strained jelly. This one is unusually austere for the type — just two fruits and sugar — and it reads like a seasonal convenience as much as a recipe, since sour cherries and black raspberries ripen in roughly the same stretch of late June through July, varying by latitude across the northern states, and the raspberries carry enough pectin to help set fruit that sets poorly on its own. Butterick, better known for dress patterns, published household compendiums as an extension of the same audience of home managers.</historyplaceholder>