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Strawberry Syrup
Put six pounds of perfectly ripe and dry strawberries into a bowl, pour over them six quarts of cold water in which two and one-half ounces of tartaric acid has been mixed, and let them stand for twenty-four hours. Strain the liquor carefully off the fruit, measure it and for each pint use one pound of finely-crushed loaf sugar. Pour the syrup into bottles, cork them, tie down with twine, and dip the nozzle in melted rosin. Keep the syrup in a dry store-cupboard.
This is a cold-process fruit syrup bottled for open-shelf storage, and that is where it fails by current standards. The notes below explain the terms and the specific problems rather than offering a corrected method; for a strawberry syrup to keep, use a current tested recipe with a heat step and refrigeration.
- Nothing is ever heatedThe fruit steeps twenty-four hours at room temperature, the sugar is stirred into cold liquor, and the filled bottles are never processed. Wild yeasts and moulds from the berry surface go straight into the bottle alive, and a sugar-rich acid liquid is an ideal medium for them.
- Corked and tied for a reasonCorked and tied -- Twine over the cork and rosin over the nozzle are the ordinary nineteenth-century way of closing a bottle against air and leakage. Whatever the intention, a sealed glass bottle of actively fermenting syrup builds real pressure and can fail suddenly.
- The sugar is doing all the preservingOne pound of sugar per pint of liquor is a heavy syrup, and the tartaric acid drops the pH further, so the recipe is not reckless by the standards of 1896. But sugar and acid alone slow spoilage rather than stop it, and osmotic preservation is only reliable when the concentration is measured, which it is not here.
- Twenty-four hours at room temperatureSix pounds of fruit sitting in six quarts of water for a full day is a long warm hold before any preservative sugar is added at all. The acidified water is the only safeguard during that period.
- Tartaric acidA genuine food acid, sold now for wine-making and confectionery, and the same compound that gives grapes and cream of tartar their sourness. Two and a half ounces in six quarts is a strongly sour infusion; it is here to extract colour and flavour and to sharpen a syrup made from mild berries, not as a sterilant.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in hard cones or blocks, broken up and crushed for use. Ordinary granulated sugar is the same substance; the instruction to crush it finely simply reflects that it had to dissolve without heat.
- RosinPine resin, melted and used to cap the bottle neck as a moisture seal. It sets brittle, chips into whatever it is protecting, and has no place on a food container now.
- ScaleSix pounds of fruit and six quarts of water yield something over two gallons of finished syrup, a large batch by household standards.
Oscar Tschirky's book belongs to the era when a large hotel made its own soda-fountain and bar syrups by the gallon, and strawberry, raspberry and orgeat syrups were as much bar stock as spirits were. Diluted with plain or aerated water it became a summer drink; it also went into sherbets, punches and the sweet sauces of the pastry department. The tartaric acid is the tell of a commercial kitchen: cheap, stable, and reliably sour in a way that fruit alone is not, it gives a berry syrup the bite that keeps it from tasting flat when watered down. The syrup is macerated cold rather than boiled, a method that spares the fresh top note and the colour the dulling and browning that heat brings.