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Rhubarb Jam
Peel and trim several stalks of rhubarb, weigh them and allow to each pound of rhubarb one pound of sugar and one lemon. Take a large bowl and pare as thin as possible the yellow rind off a lemon into it; then cut off and throw away the white part of the skin and slice the pulp of the lemon into the bowl, taking out and throwing away the seeds. Cut the rhubarb into pieces about one-half inch thick, place it in the bowl on the top of the lemon and place the sugar on top of the rhubarb, allowing it to stand all night. The following morning empty the bowl into a preserving-pan, place it on the stove and let it boil very slowly for three-quarters of an hour; then move the pan from the stove, let the jam cool a little and put it into jars. When quite cold put a piece of white paper soaked in brandy on top of the jam in each jar, and cover so as to keep it air-tight.
A plain equal-weights preserve that depends entirely on the overnight maceration and a genuinely slow boil. The only part that needs rethinking is the storage.
- Weigh, don't measureThe whole recipe is a ratio: one pound trimmed rhubarb to one pound sugar to one lemon. A pound of rhubarb is roughly four or five medium stalks and should yield somewhere between two and three 8-ounce jars once cooked down.
- Discard the leaves"Trim" means cut away all leaf material, which is high in oxalic acid and should never go into the pan. Only the stalk is used. Peeling is optional with young forced rhubarb but worth doing with thick, stringy field stalks.
- The overnight stand is the methodSugar draws the juice out of the rhubarb so the jam starts as a syrup rather than a dry pan of fruit. Skipping it means adding water, which lengthens the boil and dulls the flavour. Cover the bowl and leave it at room temperature or in the refrigerator.
- Lemon rind and pulp, no pithThe thin yellow zest carries the oil, the sliced pulp carries acid and pectin, and the white pith carries bitterness. Rhubarb is very low in pectin, so the lemon is doing real structural work here, not just seasoning.
- "Preserving-pan" means wideA broad, heavy pan with sloping sides, so evaporation happens fast over a large surface. A wide stainless or enamelled cast-iron pot works; a tall stockpot will not, and the jam will take far longer than the stated time.
- Three-quarters of an hour is a guide, not a ruleJudge by set, not clock. Rhubarb jam is done at about 220F on a candy thermometer, or when a spoonful on a chilled saucer wrinkles when pushed. Rhubarb breaks down completely, so it will look thin while hot and firm considerably as it cools.
- The brandy paper is not a modern sealA round of spirit-soaked paper laid on the surface discourages surface mould in a cellar-stored crock; it does not sterilise the jar or exclude air the way a processed lid does. Fill sterilised jars and either refrigerate and use within a month, or process in a boiling-water bath following current canning guidance for high-acid preserves.
- SweetnessEqual weights of sugar is standard for a keeping jam and is what makes it keep. Cutting the sugar gives a looser, more perishable product that must be treated as a refrigerator preserve.
Rhubarb reached American kitchen gardens well before it reached American cookbooks with any dignity; through most of the nineteenth century it was known as "pie plant", a cheap, hardy spring crop that arrived weeks before any real fruit and was valued mainly for that. Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born ma tre d'h tel whose name carried the Waldorf's kitchen into print in 1896, lent that name to recipes of exactly this kind alongside the hotel's grander dishes: a domestic English-style preserve, equal weights of fruit and sugar, lemon for acid and set, and no thickener or commercial pectin, which was not yet sold to households. The brandy-soaked paper cover is the older tradition still visible in the book, a habit inherited from an era when preserves lived in a cool larder rather than a sealed jar, and alcohol on the surface was one of several defences against mould, alongside tied bladders, sealing wax, paraffin and stone crocks.