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Grape or Plum Jam
Stew in a little water, and press the fruit through a colander or coarse sieve, adding a little water to plums to get all the pulp through; add sugar, and finish as in other jams.
A shorthand entry that assumes you have already read the other jam recipes in the section. The two things it leaves out are the sugar ratio and how long to boil, so both are worth fixing before you start.
- "Finish as in other jams""Finish as in other jams" points back to the fuller jam method given earlier in the section: return the sieved pulp to the pan with sugar and boil, stirring often, until it thickens and sheets from the spoon. Boiling time varies with the fruit's water content.
- Sugar proportionPeriod jam practice was roughly three quarters to a full pound of sugar per pound of sieved pulp. Grapes and underripe plums carry enough acid and pectin to set at that ratio; very ripe plums may need lemon juice.
- Grapes: separate the skinsFor slip-skin grapes such as Concord, squeeze the pulp from the skins first, cook and sieve the pulp to remove seeds, then return the skins to the pot. Sieving skin and seed together gives a gritty, bitter jam.
- Plum pitsHalve and pit plums before stewing rather than trying to press them through the sieve; cracked pits can lend a faint almond bitterness.
- "A little water"Only enough to stop scorching before the juice runs; a quarter cup per pound of fruit is a reasonable reading of it. Grapes need almost none.
- Testing the setChill a saucer in the freezer, drop a spoonful on it, and push it with a fingertip after a minute. If it wrinkles, it is done. This works better than the spoon test on a low-pectin plum batch.
- StorageJams of this period were commonly sealed with paraffin over tumblers or stoneware, a method no longer considered sound; the recipe itself gives no sealing instruction. Refrigerate and use within a few weeks, or follow current water-bath canning guidance for jars and processing times.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; four pounds of fruit with sugar will fill several half-pint jars, the exact number depending on losses to skins, seeds and evaporation.
Jam and jelly recipes crowd the back sections of nineteenth-century American cookbooks because preserving was one of several ways households kept summer fruit past September, alongside drying, cellaring, and canning, and sugar had become cheap enough by the 1880s to use by the pound. The Dixie Cook Book shares much of its material with the Midwestern Buckeye Cookery tradition, which explains the compressed cross-referencing style here: one full jam method is given, and the rest of the fruits are handled in a line or two. Grapes in a Southern kitchen of this period usually meant scuppernongs, muscadines, or Concord-type slip-skin varieties rather than wine grapes, all of which have tough skins and prominent seeds, which is exactly why the colander and sieve appear in the first sentence.