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Strawberry Jam
Many persons consider that to cook a strawberry is to ruin its flavor; and, this is, perhaps, true in regard to the large cultivated berry. But the small strawberry (really the last of the picking) is sweeter and stands cooking very well. Small, wild strawberries are by far the best for jam, as their flavor is not lost in the cooking. Carefully examine the berries and remove any hulls that may have been left on. Weigh the fruit, and to every pound allow three-quarters of a pound of sugar. Put the fruit on the fire alone, mashing it as it heats; a wooden potato-masher is best for the purpose. Add a scanty pint of water to every four pounds of fruit, and allow it to boil thirty minutes, stirring almost constantly and crushing any berries that may remain whole. Meanwhile place the sugar in a pan in the oven so that it will be thoroughly warmed at the end of the thirty minutes; then add the sugar to the fruit, and boil both together twenty minutes longer, stirring well to prevent burning. Just before the time is ended, place the jars in water as hot as the glass will stand without cracking; drain them and at once adjust the rubbers. Take the jam out a cup at a time, and, placing the jar on a plate to prevent waste, fill it to overflowing. As the jam runs out of the top, screw down the metal cover tightly. Use the wrench that comes for this purpose, as the top can thus be made perfectly tight. After all the jars have been filled, wash and dry them thoroughly, and set the jars away in a cool, dark place. Jam made in this may may be kept for an indefinite period.
A long-boiled, no-pectin jam with a sugar ratio lower than modern practice. Two things need attention: judging the set by temperature rather than the clock, and sealing the jars by a method that is no longer considered sound.
- The hinge: judge by set, not by minutesFifty minutes of total boiling is a guess at what a thermometer now tells you directly. Cook to 220F (104C) at sea level, or until a spoonful chilled on a cold plate wrinkles when pushed; strawberries are low in pectin and a thin batch is the usual failure.
- Sugar ratioThree-quarters of a pound of sugar to a pound of fruit is about 3 cups sugar per 4 cups mashed berries. That is less than the 1:1 many later recipes use, which means a softer set and a shorter keeping life once opened.
- "A scanty pint"Just under 2 cups of water per 4 lb of fruit. Ripe berries give up plenty of their own juice, so this is only to keep the pan from catching before the fruit collapses.
- Warming the sugarSugar spread in a pan in a low oven dissolves without dropping the boil when it hits the fruit. Worth doing; it shortens the second stage.
- Rubbers and the wrenchThis assumes screw-top jars with a separate rubber ring and a zinc or metal cap tightened with a lid wrench. Those jars and rings are no longer made for use. Modern two-piece lids seal by vacuum as the jar cools, and the band is tightened only fingertip-tight.
- Open-kettle sealingFilling hot jars to overflowing and screwing down the cap was standard in 1900, but it seals against nothing but luck. Current practice is to fill clean hot jars leaving 1/4 inch of headspace and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. Jam is acid enough that spoilage shows as surface mold rather than anything worse, but unprocessed jars fail often.
- "An indefinite period"Treat sealed and processed jars as good for a year in a cool dark cupboard, and refrigerate after opening. The "cool, dark place" of the original would have been a cellar or unheated pantry; a modern kitchen cupboard runs much warmer and will darken the color faster.
- Yield4 lb berries with 3 lb sugar gives roughly seven or eight half-pint jars.
- On the berriesThe advice to use small, late-picked or wild fruit still holds. Wild strawberries are hard to come by in quantity; small early-season or end-of-season cultivated berries, fully ripe, are the practical substitute. Avoid the very large hollow-centered supermarket type, which cooks to a watery pink.
The Butterick company, better known for dress patterns, published household books in the same spirit as its magazines, for women managing a house without staff. The distinction the writer draws is real: the wild or alpine strawberry, Fragaria vesca, carries a concentrated aroma that survives long boiling, while the big cultivated garden strawberry, Fragaria x ananassa, is mostly water and loses its perfume in the pan. The whole procedure at the end belongs to a specific technology, the screw-cap glass jar with a rubber ring, sealed hot straight from the kettle and tightened with a small wrench sold alongside the jars. That open-kettle method was the common American practice for home preserving through the nineteenth century, until state and federal extension services began, from the 1910s and 1920s on, to press the boiling water bath instead. Commercial pectin, first sold as a liquid fruit extract, reached the American market around the late 1910s, with powdered forms later still; before it, a jam like this got its set from sugar, acid and patience alone, which is why the boiling time here runs so long.