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Cranberry Conserve
2 quarts cranberries
2 lemons
1 cup raisins
6 cups sugar
2 oranges
Combine the grated rind and juice of the oranges and lemons with the other ingredients and cook until the mixture is thick and clear. Pour into hot clean glasses and seal. This is an excellent relish with game.
A straightforward high-sugar, high-acid preserve that needs no added pectin — cranberries supply plenty of both. The only real judgement call is when to stop cooking.
- The measure of cranberriesTwo quarts by volume is roughly 2 lb, or about three of the 12-oz bags sold today. Fresh or frozen both work; frozen berries need no thawing but will take a few minutes longer to come up to the boil.
- "Thick and clear" means 220FThis is the hinge. Cook the mixture at a full rolling boil until it reaches 220F on a candy thermometer, or until a spoonful chilled on a cold saucer wrinkles when pushed. Expect 20 to 30 minutes. Cranberry skins burst and release pectin early, so the set arrives faster than with most fruit — undercooked, it stays syrupy; overcooked, it turns to stiff, dull jelly.
- Grated rindTake only the coloured zest and none of the white pith, which is bitter and will not soften. Scrub the fruit first; most supermarket citrus is waxed.
- RaisinsA cup of dark seedless raisins is right. They plump considerably as they cook, so they need the full boiling time to soften rather than being stirred in at the end.
- Stirring and spittingThe mixture is thick and spatters as it thickens. Use a wide, heavy pan filled no more than a third deep and stir often near the end — the sugar and raisins will scorch on the bottom given the chance.
- "Hot clean glasses and seal"In the period this was written that meant scalded tumblers topped with melted paraffin, which is no longer accepted practice. Fill hot sterilised half-pint jars, leaving a quarter-inch of headspace, and process 10 minutes in a boiling water bath; or skip canning entirely and keep the conserve refrigerated, where it holds for a month or more.
- Yield and servingProbably seven to eight half-pints. As the recipe says, it goes with game — venison, duck, roast goose — and equally with turkey, pork, or a firm sheep's-milk cheese.
Cranberry preserves belong to the small group of American dishes built on a native fruit that Europe had no direct equivalent for: Vaccinium macrocarpon, harvested from bogs in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Wisconsin, and commercially cultivated from the early nineteenth century onward. A "conserve" is generally understood to be a specific thing — a jam carrying whole fruit plus raisins, nuts or citrus, richer and chunkier than a plain preserve, and intended as much for the meat platter as for toast. The pairing with game reflects an older kitchen logic in which sharp fruit relishes cut the richness of venison and wildfowl, the same reasoning that put currant jelly beside mutton. That Butterick, a pattern company, was publishing recipe collections at all says something about the period: household guidance, dressmaking and cookery were sold to the same reader as a single domestic skill set.