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Gooseberry Jam
Weigh out seven pounds of gooseberries, wipe them well with a cloth, cut off the stalks and put them in a preserving-pan with seven pounds of sugar and one pint of water, and boil over a clear fire. When the gooseberries are soft, remove the scum that forms at the top, pour them into jam jars, cover them first with paper dipped in brandy and then with bladder or parchment paper, tie down tightly, and keep them in a dry cupboard until needed.
A straight equal-weight preserve of the old school: fruit, sugar, a little water, and a hard boil. Gooseberries are so high in pectin and acid that the set takes care of itself; the only real work is topping and tailing the fruit and knowing when to stop boiling.
- Scale it downSeven pounds of fruit and seven of sugar makes an enormous quantity of jam — on the order of eighteen to twenty half-pint jars — and needs a very wide pan. A quarter batch — 1 3/4 lb fruit, 1 3/4 lb sugar, 1/2 cup water — behaves the same and is far easier to manage on a domestic burner.
- "Cut off the stalks"The text asks only for the stems, though many cooks top and tail gooseberries, snipping off the dried blossom end as well with scissors or a paring knife. It is tedious work either way.
- Use underripe fruitGreen, hard gooseberries have the most pectin and acid and give the firmest set and the classic pink-amber color after long boiling. Fully ripe dessert berries make a softer, sweeter jam and may need a longer boil.
- The pint of waterOscar's pint is likely the US 16 fl oz. It is only there to keep the sugar from catching before the fruit releases its juice, so a scant measure is safer than a generous one.
- Judging the set"When the gooseberries are soft" undersells it — soft fruit comes well before a set. Boil hard to 220°F (a jelly thermometer is the least fussy way), or test a spoonful on a chilled saucer until it wrinkles when pushed. Expect 15 to 25 minutes of hard boiling at full batch size.
- SkimmingSkim once near the end rather than repeatedly; every skim takes jam with it. A pat of butter stirred in at the finish will disperse most of the foam.
- SealingBrandy-dipped paper, bladder and tied parchment were mold barriers, not seals. Fill sterilized half-pint jars to 1/4 inch of the rim, wipe the rims, apply two-piece lids and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes, adjusting for altitude. An unprocessed jar keeps only in the refrigerator.
- StorageThe "dry cupboard" instruction is sound — dampness rusts lids and encourages mold on the surface. Sealed and processed, the jam keeps a year; the color darkens toward brown-red over time without harm.
Gooseberries were a British and northern European obsession long before they were an American one — Lancashire weavers ran competitive gooseberry shows for prize-sized berries through the nineteenth century — and an equal-weight gooseberry jam like this one is essentially an English farmhouse preserve carried into a New York hotel kitchen. Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maître d'hôtel whose name fronts this 1896 collection, gathered a great deal of such domestic English and Continental practice alongside the Waldorf's restaurant cookery, and the sealing method here — paper dipped in spirit, then a bladder or parchment tied down over the jar mouth — is pure pre-canning household technique, decades older than the book. Gooseberries themselves became scarce in much of the United States in the early twentieth century, when *Ribes* plantings were restricted in many states as an alternate host of white pine blister rust; the bans were later relaxed unevenly, which is why the fruit is still easier to find frozen or at a farmers' market than in a supermarket.