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Spiced Currants
Stem the fruit, and if dusty wash it.
To every four pounds of currants allow two pounds of brown sugar, one pint of vinegar, one tablespoon of allspice, one tablespoon of cloves and one tablespoon of nutmeg. Make a syrup of the sugar, vinegar and spices, and when the sugar is dissolved, boil the fruit in the syrup one-half hour. Put up in wide-mouthed bottles, lay a paper wet with brandy on top of the currants, and tie up the mouth of each bottle with paper.
A sweet-sour spiced fruit preserve of the kind served alongside cold meat and game. Two things need attention: which currants are meant, and the fact that the sealing method predates reliable canning.
- The fruit is fresh currantsThese are fresh red or black currants on the stem, not the dried Zante currants sold in the baking aisle. Four pounds is a large quantity of fresh currants; frozen ones work and need no thawing, though they will give up more juice.
- MeasuresOne pint of vinegar is two cups. Two pounds of brown sugar is roughly 4 1/2 cups packed. Modern cider or white vinegar is standardised at 5 percent acidity; vinegar made or bought at home in this period was not standardised, so its strength varied.
- The spices are groundThe spices -- The recipe does not say whether the spices are whole or ground; nutmeg measured by the tablespoon suggests grated, and nothing is strained out of the syrup. Three tablespoons of spice against four pounds of fruit is assertive by current taste, and clove tends to dominate; halving the quantity gives a milder result.
- Half an hour is not a mistakeCurrants are high in pectin and acid, and thirty minutes at a boil will collapse the skins and thicken the syrup. With only two pounds of sugar and a pint of vinegar to four pounds of fruit, however, expect a loose spiced conserve rather than a firm set.
- Watch for scorchingAs the sugar concentrates in the last ten minutes the mixture catches easily. Use a wide heavy pan and stir down to the bottom; a splatter guard is worth having, since thick fruit syrup spits.
- The seal is obsoleteBrandy-soaked paper tied over the mouth was a pre-canning method that relied on alcohol and sugar to hold off surface mold. It is not a seal. Treat the finished preserve as a refrigerator product, or follow current water-bath canning directions from a tested source for jars and processing times.
- Yield and servingExpect roughly three to four pints. Serve cold or at room temperature with ham, cold roast lamb, game birds, or a firm cheese; a spoonful also cuts through a rich terrine.
Spiced fruit belongs to the "sweet pickle" family that filled the pickles-and-catsups chapters of American cookbooks throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth: peaches, crabapples, plums, grapes and currants boiled down with sugar, vinegar and warm spices such as allspice, clove, nutmeg, cinnamon and mace, then set out as a relish to cut the fat of roasted and cold meats. Currants were a common dooryard bush crop in the northern states at the time, ripening all at once, which is why they turn up in jelly, shrub, wine and pickle recipes in such volume. The brandy-wetted paper laid on the surface is the older technique the recipe preserves: preservers relied on sugar, acid and a spirit-soaked cover to keep mold off the top, with a second paper tied over the mouth to keep out dust and insects, a method that persisted in print well after screw-top and rubber-ringed jars were on the market. Butterick, better known for dress patterns, published cook books as part of a broad household library aimed at the same middle-class readership.