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American Crab-Apple Jam
After removing all stalks and unsound parts from the fruit, wipe them well, and spread out before the fire to make sure that the peels are thoroughly dried. Then weigh the fruit and put it into a preserving-pan, together with an equal quantity of preserving-sugar, and enough white wine to moisten. Allow this to boil well, skim well, and while it is boiling, put in a few pieces of lemon peel, chopped, or a small quantity of cloves, and continue boiling until the fruit begins to break, then place it in large glass jars. Tie down when cold.
A high-sugar, high-pectin preserve that needs almost no help to set. The two things the original leaves vague are the wine and the finishing point.
- Preserving sugarCoarse-crystal white sugar sold for jam-making; it dissolves slowly and throws less scum. Ordinary granulated sugar works identically here, weight for weight with the prepared fruit.
- "Spread out before the fire"This is drying the surface moisture off washed fruit, not cooking it. A tray on the counter or a few minutes in a very low oven, around 200F, does the same job.
- Enough wine to moistenUnquantified in the original. For 2 lb of crab apples, about a cup of dry white wine is enough to keep the pan from catching before the fruit releases its own juice; add more only if it looks dry in the first ten minutes.
- Cores and seeds stay inThe original never says to core or cut the fruit, and it speaks of drying 'the peels', so the fruit is presumably cooked whole; crab-apple cores and skins are where much of the pectin sits. The result is a rough jam with pips in it. Quartering the fruit and passing the cooked pulp through a coarse sieve before the final boil gives a smoother preserve and costs little set.
- When it is done"Until the fruit begins to break" is the visual cue, but check the set: 220F on a thermometer, or a spoonful chilled on a cold saucer that wrinkles when pushed. Crab apples are acid and pectin-rich, so this usually arrives 20 to 30 minutes after a hard boil begins.
- Cloves and lemon peelA few cloves go a long way in a small batch; four or five whole cloves in a scrap of muslin, fished out before potting, is safer than loose ones you cannot retrieve. Lemon peel should be pared thin, with no white pith.
- "Tie down when cold"Period sealing was a paper or bladder cover tied over the jar rim, which relies on the sugar alone to keep mold out. Fill sterilized jars while the jam is near boiling, and either refrigerate them or process the sealed jars in a boiling-water bath following current preserving guidance if you want them shelf-stable.
- YieldTwo pounds of fruit with two pounds of sugar gives roughly five to six half-pint jars.
Crab apples were the one apple already growing wild in North America when Europeans arrived, and species such as Malus coronaria and Malus angustifolia stayed in use long after orchard varieties took over the pie dish, precisely because they are too sour and too astringent to eat out of hand. What makes them useless as dessert fruit makes them ideal for preserves: high acid, very high pectin, and a set that needs no added help. That is why nineteenth-century American cookbooks are thick with crab-apple jelly, jam and spiced pickle recipes while saying little about eating the fruit raw.