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Grape Jam
Mrs. S. W. Cheever.
Take your grapes, separate the skin from the pulp keeping them in separate dishes, put the pulp in your preserving kettle with a teacup of water; when thoroughly heated, run them through a colander to seperate the seeds; then put your skins with them and weigh; to each pound of fruit, put three-fourths of a pound of sugar; add merely water enough to keep from burning; cook slowly three-fourths of an hour. This is a delicious jam, and worth the trouble.
A slip-skin grape jam of the classic American kind, written for cooks who knew that Concord skins and pulp behave differently and must be cooked apart before being reunited. The method still works exactly as given; only the vessels, the measures and the storage need translating.
- The grapes must be slip-skinThis only works with Concord, Niagara, Catawba and their relatives, whose skins pinch off cleanly from the pulp under thumb pressure. Table grapes from a supermarket are tight-skinned and seedless, and the whole separate-and-recombine procedure collapses with them.
- A teacup of waterA teacup -- not a fixed measure in a nineteenth-century American kitchen; period sources reckon it at anywhere from about half a cup to three-quarters of a cup (roughly 120-175 ml). It is only there to keep the pulp from catching before it releases its own juice.
- Preserving kettleA wide, shallow, unlined copper or heavy enamelled pan. Any wide heavy-bottomed non-reactive pot works; width matters more than depth, since evaporation is what thickens the jam.
- Running the pulp through a colanderA colander in this period often meant a fine perforated bowl, but a food mill or a medium sieve does the job better. Work the hot pulp through with a wooden spoon or ladle and discard the seeds; do not press so hard that seed fragments go through.
- Three-quarters of a pound of sugar to the poundA 3:4 sugar-to-fruit ratio by weight, a little under the pound-for-pound proportion often used for preserves. Grapes carry pectin and acid, which helps it set; expect a soft, spoonable jam rather than a firm one.
- Cook slowly three-quarters of an hourForty-five minutes over low heat, stirring often as it thickens, since the sugar will scorch at the base once the mixture reduces. Test for set on a chilled saucer rather than by the clock; the exact time depends on how juicy the grapes are and how wide the pan is.
- YieldWeigh after seeding, as the recipe directs, because seeds are a significant fraction of the raw weight; the finished quantity will depend on how far the jam is reduced.
- StorageThe original gives no sealing instructions, and open-kettle sealing under a paraffin cap is no longer considered sound. Refrigerate the jam and use it within a few weeks, freeze it, or follow current tested boiling-water canning directions for grape jam.
Grape jam of this kind belongs to the Concord grape, the American slip-skin variety selected in Massachusetts in the mid-nineteenth century and planted across the northern states within a generation. Its skins are tough and astringent while its pulp is soft and full of seeds, so cooks developed exactly the two-pot procedure Mrs. Cheever describes: heat the pulp, sieve out the seeds, then bring the skins back in for colour, tannin and body. The Home Cook Book was compiled from contributions by named women of a community, and the closing line here, "worth the trouble," is the voice of a contributor speaking up for her own recipe.