Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Red Currant Preserve
Red Currant Preserve
Pick four pounds of red currants from the stalks and put them into a pan over the fire to dry; next press them through a sieve and put back again over the fire, stirring constantly until the liquor becomes so clear that the bottom of the pan can be seen Melt six pounds of sugar over the fire and boil to the ball degree, which is ascertained by dipping the finger into cold water, then instantly into the boiling sugar, and back immediately into the cold water. If the sugar will roll from the finger in a little ball, can be crumbled between the fingers, and will stick to the teeth if bitten, the sugar is boiled to this state. Then pour the sugar over the currants and keep stirring them. In a short time, remove from the fire but continue stirring until the liquor bubbles, then turn it into moulds.
This is closer to a fruit paste — a pâte de fruits — than to a spoonable jam, which is why it ends up in moulds rather than jars. The hinge is the sugar temperature: everything else is straightforward.
- Do not use the finger testSugar at the ball stage is 240-260F and will cause a deep burn if it clings to skin. Use a candy thermometer; the wet-finger method described here was standard confectioner's practice before thermometers were cheap, not a technique worth reviving.
- "The ball degree"Oscar's description — rolls into a ball, crumbles between the fingers, sticks to the teeth when bitten — spans firm ball to hard ball, roughly 245-260F. For a paste stiff enough to turn out of a mould, work at the upper end of that range.
- "Put them into a pan over the fire to dry"This does not mean dehydrate. It means cook the currants gently until they collapse and release their juice, five to ten minutes, so they will go through a sieve.
- SievingPress the cooked fruit through a fine sieve or a food mill to leave skins and the many hard seeds behind. A blender will not do it — currant seeds are gritty and must be removed, not broken up.
- No added pectin neededRed currants are among the highest-pectin fruits in the kitchen and also very acidic, which is why a 6:4 sugar-to-fruit ratio sets firm with no help. Do not add commercial pectin.
- "Until the liquor bubbles"After the hot syrup goes in, the mixture is stirred off the heat until it thickens and begins to blip heavily as trapped air escapes. That is the signal it is ready to mould; carry on past it and it will set in the pan.
- MouldsSmall metal moulds, or a shallow tray lined with oiled parchment, from which the set paste is cut into squares.
- Yield and keepingTen pounds of ingredients go into the pan and some water is driven off, so expect somewhat less finished paste. This is a confection, not a canned preserve: it is not sealed or heat-processed, so store the pieces layered in waxed paper in a cool, dry place and expect them to weep in humidity. If you want jars for the pantry, follow current tested water-bath directions.
Red currants were a mainstay of European preserving, prized for setting hard without any additive; the most celebrated version is the Bar-le-Duc jam of Lorraine, whose seeds were traditionally picked out one by one with a goose quill. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's legendary maître d'hôtel, published his enormous compendium in 1896, and the presence of a confectioner's sugar-boiling lesson inside a fruit preserve is a fair picture of a big hotel kitchen of the period, where everything was judged by hand and eye rather than by instrument. Currants are less familiar to American cooks now for a documented reason: the bushes host white pine blister rust, and from the 1910s onward state and federal bans on growing Ribes species pushed them out of American gardens and markets for most of a century.