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Raspberry Syrup (Have in a small saucepan two)
Have in a small saucepan two ounces granulated sugar, one gill cold water, one gill raspberry juice and one tablespoon Jamaica rum. Boil for ten minutes, remove the pan from the fire, then it will be ready for use.
A thin dessert syrup rather than a preserving syrup — the sugar-to-liquid ratio is low, so the ten-minute boil is doing the work of concentration. It makes a small quantity, enough to sauce a pudding or flavour a few drinks.
- A gill is half a cupTwo gills here means 4 fl oz of water and 4 fl oz of raspberry juice, 120 ml each. The finished syrup will be well under a cup after boiling.
- Sugar by weightTwo ounces of granulated sugar is about 1/4 cup plus 2 teaspoons, or 57 g. That is a low proportion against 8 fl oz of liquid, which is why the syrup stays pourable and will not keep long.
- The raspberry juicePresumably fresh juice pressed from ripe berries and strained, though the recipe does not say. Something in the region of 8 oz of raspberries, crushed and pushed through a fine sieve, should give the gill required. Bottled raspberry juice or a strained no-sugar-added puree works; allow for the extra sweetness if it is already sugared.
- Ten minutes is a hard boilTen minutes at a boil -- how far it concentrates depends on the width of the pan and the heat, so judge it by eye rather than by the clock; it will thicken only slightly on cooling. Stir at the start to dissolve the sugar, then leave it; scrape the sides down so no crystals catch and colour.
- When the rum goes inAdding the rum at the beginning, as written, boils off most of the alcohol and leaves a rounded molasses note. If you want the rum forward, stir the tablespoon in off the heat instead.
- Jamaica rumAt the time this meant a dark, largely pot-still rum with a pungent ester character, not a light column-still white. A dark Jamaican rum is still the closest match.
- Yield and keepingWell under a cup. With this little sugar it is not shelf-stable; refrigerate and use within a week. It is meant for spooning over ices, puddings and fruit, or stirring into soda water.
Fruit syrups sat somewhere between the still-room and the bar in the nineteenth century, and raspberry syrup was a common one — thin enough to pour over an ice or a moulded pudding, sweet enough to turn a glass of cold water into a drink for children and invalids. Spirits were a familiar seasoning in pastry work of the period, used the way vanilla or kirsch might be, to give a sweet sauce some depth. Filippini drew on his years at Delmonico's, and the frank instruction that after ten minutes' boiling "it will be ready for use" — no bottling, no sealing — points to a syrup made shortly before it was wanted.