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Stewed Raisins
Wash as many as are needed and leave them in water for twenty-four hours. Then heat them slowly in the water in which they have soaked, which should cover them one-half inch or more. Allow them to simmer on the back of the range for two hours or more.
A recipe of four sentences and no measurements, which tells you it was meant as a technique rather than a formula. The point is to restore dried fruit to plumpness and produce its own syrup, with no added sugar at all.
- The hinge: never let it boil"Simmer on the back of the range" means the coolest zone of a coal range, barely bubbling. On a modern burner use the lowest setting with a lid ajar, or hold at 200-210F. A rolling boil bursts the skins and turns the fruit to jam.
- Quantity and yieldThe recipe gives no measurements; two cups of raisins makes a workable batch. Soaked and simmered they swell considerably, enough for several small servings as a compote or spoonfuls to eat as a sweetmeat.
- The water level mattersHalf an inch over the fruit is the whole measurement in this recipe. Too little and the raisins scorch before they soften; too much and you get thin liquid instead of syrup, since nothing here thickens but the fruit's own sugar.
- The raisins have changedRaisins of this period were often seeded muscatels, large, tough-skinned and sometimes stem-on, which took a long soak. Modern seedless Thompsons soften in a few hours of soaking and thirty to forty-five minutes of simmering; a full two hours is likely to break them down.
- Soaking overnight is enoughTwenty-four hours at room temperature is longer than any modern kitchen needs, and in warm weather the soaking water can begin to ferment. Soak overnight in the refrigerator and cook in that same water, which holds the sugar drawn out of the fruit.
- Wash them, stillOld raisins carried stems, grit and sand from open-air drying. Present-day fruit is cleaner, but a rinse removes the oil coating used on some brands, which otherwise leaves a slick on the syrup.
- Why it sits under CandiesStewed until the liquid is nearly gone the raisins glaze themselves, which may be why the dish was grouped with confectionery; the recipe itself says nothing about reducing the liquid or sugaring them. Stop while a spoonful of syrup remains if you want them as a sauce for rice pudding or cornmeal mush instead.
- KeepingRefrigerate in the syrup in a covered jar and use within a week. There is no sugar or acid here to preserve them.
Butterick published its cook book in the same decades that its pattern catalogues went into American parlours, and the book carries the same tone: practical instruction for a household without a professional cook. Stewed raisins belong to a family of unsweetened fruit dishes that ran through turn-of-the-century domestic cookery and invalid cookery alike, where dried fruit slowly rehydrated was often said to be gentle on the digestion, and was certainly cheap. The raisins themselves were increasingly Californian by 1900 as vineyard planting in the San Joaquin Valley expanded through the 1880s and 1890s, displacing imported Malaga and Smyrna fruit. Placing the dish among candies rather than desserts reflects a period habit of counting sugared or glazed fruit as confectionery, an inexpensive sweet in a household that might make its own rather than buy it.