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Red Currant Syrup
Place the required quantity of freshly-picked red currants in a bowl and mash them with a wooden spoon; cover the bowl and let them stand for three or four hours. Strain the juice through a jelly-bag, measure it and put into a sugar boiler with three-quarters of a pound of lump sugar to each pint of juice. Boil until reduced to a clear syrup keeping it well skinned; then take off the fire and leave until cold. Pour the syrup into small bottles, pour a little fresh salad oil on the top of each to preserve it, and put them in an upright position in a dry cupboard until required,
A plain fruit syrup, but two things in it belong firmly to 1896: the sugar-to-juice ratio is given by weight per pint, and the keeping method is a film of oil rather than a seal.
- The hinge: stop short of jellyRed currants are among the most pectin-rich fruits there is, and juice and sugar boiled well past this point can set to a jelly. Boil only until the syrup sheets thickly off a spoon and looks clear, then pull it off the heat; test a spoonful on a cold plate if you are unsure.
- Sugar boilerAny heavy, wide, non-reactive pan — stainless or copper, not bare aluminium or iron, which will dull the colour. Width matters more than depth, since you are evaporating water.
- Lump sugar and the ratioLump sugar was simply refined cane sugar in pressed pieces; ordinary granulated is the direct substitute. Three-quarters of a pound to the pint works out to about 1⅔ cups sugar per 2 cups of juice.
- "Well skinned"Almost certainly a misprint for "skimmed". Lift the pinkish foam off as it rises with a flat spoon; left in, it clouds the finished syrup.
- Jelly-bagA double layer of damp cheesecloth in a sieve does the same job. Let it drip rather than squeezing, or the syrup goes cloudy.
- The three- or four-hour standThis maceration lets the crushed fruit release juice without heat, which is what keeps the flavour bright and the colour scarlet. Cover the bowl and keep it cool — crushed fruit standing in a warm kitchen can begin to ferment.
- Salad oil is not a sealA float of neutral oil was the Victorian answer to keeping air off syrup in a partly used bottle. It does not preserve anything reliably; skip it, bottle hot into clean jars, and keep the syrup in the refrigerator or freeze it in small portions.
- YieldRoughly 2 lb of currants give about a pint of juice, which finishes as 1½ to 2 cups of syrup. Use it over ice with soda water, in sorbets, or brushed on cake.
Currant syrup — sirop de groseille — was a standard bar and pastry item in the French-influenced hotel kitchens of the period: a base for summer drinks, a glaze for fruit tarts, a colouring and sweetener for sauces and ices. Red currants had a particular usefulness because their season is short and their pectin high, so the same afternoon's picking could be turned into jelly or syrup. That the recipe assumes "freshly-picked" fruit and specifies bottling for the cupboard is a reminder of how much of a large 1890s kitchen's work was preservation done in-house, before commercial fruit syrups and cordials made it unnecessary. A float of oil to exclude air was common advice in nineteenth-century household manuals for syrups, vinegars and oils alike.