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Cherry Jam
Select for this fairly ripe fruit. Make a small hole in each and remove the stone, breaking the cherry as little as possible. Add three-quarters of a pound of preserving sugar to every pound of fruit. Put them into a preserving pan, place it on a good fire and boil, stirring it constantly from the start. Allow it to boil for three-quarters of an hour, then take out a little and place it on a cold plate to test. If it jellies or sets, the jam is done and must be put into jars at once. Remove the jars to a cool place and tie them down. It will not be necessary to skim the jam while it is boiling, as all the scum will boil away.
A plain uncooked-pectin jam that relies on long boiling and a cold-plate test rather than a thermometer. Two things need translating: what "preserving sugar" was, and how the jars were meant to be sealed.
- Preserving sugarThis means large-crystal white sugar, which dissolves slowly and was thought to produce less scum. It contains no added pectin, so it is not the same as modern "jam sugar." Ordinary granulated sugar behaves the same way here.
- The sugar ratioThree-quarters of a pound of sugar per pound of fruit is roughly 1 3/4 cups sugar per pound of pitted cherries. That is at the lower end of the ratios used in Victorian preserves, many of which ran to a pound of sugar per pound of fruit.
- Cherries set badlyCherries are among the lowest-pectin fruits, and sweet cherries are also low in acid. The juice of a lemon per two pounds of fruit, or a proportion of commercial pectin, is what most modern recipes use to get a set without boiling the fruit to a paste.
- Three-quarters of an hour is a maximum, not a targetStart testing at 20 minutes. A jam of this sugar concentration reaches setting point at about 220F (105C) on a candy thermometer, and 45 minutes of hard boiling will usually take a small batch well past that into caramel and stiffness.
- The cold-plate testKeep two or three saucers in the freezer. Drop a teaspoon on a chilled plate, wait half a minute, then push it with a fingertip: if the surface wrinkles and holds a line, it is done. Pull the pan off the heat while you test.
- Constant stirring is not optionalWith a low sugar ratio and no water added, the fruit scorches easily. Use a wide, heavy pan so evaporation is fast and the sugar is never sitting still on the bottom.
- Sealing and storage"Tie them down" means paper or cloth covers over the jar mouths, sometimes with melted paraffin beneath, a common closure of the period. This gives no vacuum seal. Fill clean hot jars and either refrigerate and eat within a month, or process filled jars in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes for shelf storage.
- YieldOscar gives no quantity. Two pounds of pitted cherries with 1 1/2 pounds of sugar yields roughly four half-pint jars.
- On the scumIt does largely disperse in a hard-boiled jam, but skimming once near the end still gives a clearer product. A very small piece of butter stirred in at the end breaks the foam.
Oscar Tschirky's The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf (1896) was a maitre d'hotel's household compendium, and its preserving chapters read like the kitchen manuals of the period rather than restaurant work: the book was sold to American housewives who still put up fruit in July. The stone-out-through-a-small-hole instruction reflects a nineteenth-century preference for whole-fruit preserves, in which the cherry was meant to survive recognizably in the jar. The confidence that scum "will boil away" belongs to a pre-thermometer tradition where a cook judged a preserve entirely by eye, plate and spoon, and the saucer test described here is a technique of exactly that kind.