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Pickled Raisins
Leave two pounds raisins on stem, add one pint vinegar and half pound sugar; simmer over a slow fire half an hour. - Mrs.
A three-ingredient sweet pickle of the kind Southern cooks kept on hand to serve with cold meat and game. The original assumes a few things a modern cook will not.
- Raisins on the stemThis means whole dried grape clusters, sold in the nineteenth century as muscatel or table raisins and still occasionally found around the winter holidays or in Middle Eastern groceries. Loose raisins work perfectly well; you lose only the presentation of a little bunch lifted from the jar.
- VinegarA pint is two cups. Household vinegar in 1880s Dixie varied widely in strength; standard 5 percent cider vinegar is the closest match and gives a rounder result than distilled white.
- ProportionsTwo pounds of raisins to two cups vinegar and a half pound (about one cup) sugar. The raisins will drink up most of the liquid, so expect a thick, glossy pickle rather than fruit floating in syrup.
- "Slow fire"A bare simmer over low heat, lid off. Sugar plus reduced vinegar scorches easily once the liquid drops, so stir occasionally and pull the pan if the bottom starts to catch.
- Half an hourTime it by texture rather than the clock. The raisins should be plump and the syrup thick enough to coat a spoon; overcooked, the sugar begins to candy and the mixture stiffens as it cools.
- StorageThe recipe gives no sealing directions, and this quantity of sugar and vinegar is not by itself a reliable shelf-stable preserve. Pack into clean jars, cool, and keep refrigerated, where it holds for several weeks. For pantry storage use current tested canning directions.
- Yield and servingRoughly a quart and a half, depending on how much liquid the fruit takes up. Serve in small amounts alongside roast pork, ham, cold fowl or a sharp cheese; a spoonful also works stirred into pan gravy.
Sweet pickles — fruit simmered in vinegar and sugar, often with cloves or cinnamon — were a standard feature of nineteenth-century American cookbooks, and The Dixie Cook Book is no exception. Their purpose was contrast: heavy platters of roast and fried meat wanted something sharp and sweet on the side, and pickled peaches, pears, plums and cherries did that work in a household where fresh fruit was scarce through the winter months. Raisins were a purchased luxury rather than a garden crop, shipped in from Spain and, by the 1870s, increasingly from California, and they arrived still on the stem in clusters — hence the instruction to leave them there. The trailing "- Mrs." is left unexplained; the book credits hundreds of contributors by name, and this one appears without hers.