No. 3673

Clear Grape Juice and Strawberry Juice

Jus de Raisin Clair et Jus de Fraises

Gather the grapes when quite ripe, place them in a vessel and pound without mashing them too much, to extricate as little coloring matter as possible. Pour the whole into a thick flannel bag to filter the juice, letting it fall into a porcelain or glass receptacle. Commence the operation again, and continue to filter the juice through the bag until it flows out quite clear. After all the juice has been filtered pour it into small strong bottles (small champagne bottles), and cork with sound corks, driving them in with a mallet; tie the corks down with strings attached to the necks of the bottles, then stand them upright, slightly apart, in a deep saucepan or soup pot, and cover to the height of the bottles with cold water. Place the pot on a moderate fire, boil for ten to twelve minutes, remove and leave the bottles cool in the water, only taking them out when thoroughly cold. Cut the strings and lay the bottles down flat, keeping them in a very cool place.

Crush some very ripe strawberries and press them on a wire sieve sufficiently fine not to permit the seeds to pass through. With this juice fill some one-quart bottles, close well, tying the corks on with a string. Range these bottles in a saucepan, cover with cold water and stand it on the range. Watch the time when the water begins to boil and leave them in for only half an hour, then take the saucepan at once from the fire and leave the bottles cool off thoroughly in the liquid. When cold lift them out, wipe dry, cut the strings and lay them down, piling one on top of the other in a cool, dry place, inclining the bottles a little forward so that the juice rests against the cork.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Two bottled fruit juices, put up by the same method: extract the juice cold, seal it in glass, and pasteurize the sealed bottles in a water bath. The whole point of the grape juice is clarity, and that depends entirely on how gently you handle the fruit.

The hinge: crush, do not mashColour and tannin live in the skins, so the grapes are pounded only enough to split them. Any grinding or twisting of the flannel bag will push pigment and pulp through and the juice will never run clear.
Filtering without a flannel bagA double layer of dampened muslin or a jelly bag set in a stand does the same work. Let it drip under its own weight, repouring the cloudy first run through the bag as the recipe directs; expect a few hours, not minutes.
"A moderate fire"On a stove this means medium heat, enough to bring the water to a bare rolling boil and hold it there. Set the bottles on a rack, folded towel or ring of cloth so they do not sit on bare metal.
Bottles and closuresChampagne bottles were chosen because they are thick and made for pressure, and the recipe has the corks driven home and tied down with string because they would otherwise push out. Modern kitchens are better served by proper preserving jars with two-piece lids; ordinary wine bottles, decorative bottles and any glass not sold as heatproof can crack or burst in a water bath.
Processing timesTen to twelve minutes for the small grape bottles and thirty minutes from the boil for quart bottles of strawberry juice is pasteurization, not sterilization. Both juices are acidic enough for this to work, but the seal has to be sound, and cooling the bottles in the water is what prevents thermal shock and helps the closure pull tight.
Strawberry juice yieldSieved strawberry juice runs to roughly half the weight of the fruit, so filling a quart bottle takes several pounds. The juice is unsweetened, and unsweetened fruit juices of this kind would have been on hand for sorbets, punches and sauces rather than for drinking straight.
Storage"A very cool place" means a cold cellar or the coolest storage available. Storing the bottles on their side with the juice against the cork keeps the cork swollen and the seal tight; with modern jars, store upright and refrigerate once opened, using within a week.
Check before usingDiscard any bottle with a lifted cork, a fizz, a haze that was not there when it went in, or an off smell. Fermentation is the usual failure with home-bottled juice and it is easy to detect.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is often read as Charles Ranhofer's record of what a great restaurant kitchen kept in reserve, and clear grape juice belongs to that logic: a colourless, unsweetened fruit essence held over from the harvest for sorbets, granités, punches and sauces in months when the fruit was gone. The technique is straightforward heat-preservation of the kind Nicolas Appert had demonstrated in France early in the nineteenth century and which household and professional kitchens had absorbed by Ranhofer's day, decades before Louis Pasteur explained why it worked. The insistence on pale juice is a period taste as much as a practical one; nineteenth-century confectioners prized water-clear fruit syrups and jellies, and a grape juice that carried no purple could be used to flavour anything without tinting it. The instruction to lay bottles on their side with the liquid against the cork echoes wine-cellar practice, though where a chef of Ranhofer's generation would have picked it up is not recorded.