Home › Syrups and Ices › Red Currant or Gooseberry Syrup
Red Currant or Gooseberry Syrup
(Sciroppo di ribes) Remove the stems from the bunches of gooseberry and place them in an earthen vase, to be kept in a cool place. When it has begun to ferment (which may happen after three or four days) sink the surface film and stir with a ladle twice a day, continuing this operation until it has stopped raising. Then put in a cheese cloth, letting the juice come out through pressing with the hands or in a machine. Pass the juice through a filter, two or three times if necessary, until you obtain a limpid liquid. Then put it on the fire and when it begins to boil pour in it granulated sugar and citric acid in the following proportions:
Liquid, six pounds.
Sugar, eight pounds.
Citric acid, one ounce.
That is to say for each three parts of the liquid, add four parts of sugar, and one ounce of citric acid for eight pounds of sugar mixed with six pounds of liquid.
Stir continually with the ladle so that the sugar does not stick to the bottom, taste it to add some more citric acid if you judge it necessary, then let it cool and place in bottles to be sealed.
When a beverage is to be prepared pour in a tumbler less than half an inch of syrup for a tumblerful of ice water.
A fruit shrub in the old sense: wild-fermented juice, clarified, then boiled to a keeping syrup with sugar and citric acid. The proportions are given by weight, and they are the part to get right.
- Ribes means currantThe Italian name given is sciroppo di ribes, red currant syrup; gooseberry in Italian is uva spina. Either fruit works. The recipe expects you to taste and add more citric acid if you judge it necessary.
- The ferment is deliberateThree or four days in a crock is not spoilage but a wild fermentation on the fruit's own yeasts; it is generally credited with breaking down pectin so the juice runs clearer and filters more easily. Sink the foam cap twice daily so the fruit stays wet; if the surface grows fuzzy or coloured mould rather than a pale film, or the smell turns solventy, discard the batch.
- Earthen vaseA glazed stoneware crock or a food-grade plastic bucket, loosely covered with cloth against fruit flies. Do not seal it, and do not use bare aluminium or unlined copper with this much acid.
- The ratioThree parts juice to four parts sugar by weight, plus one ounce (about 28 g) of citric acid per 14 lb of that mixture. Scaled to a home batch: 1 lb 8 oz juice, 2 lb sugar, 6-7 g citric acid.
- FilteringPress through cheesecloth, then rest the juice cold overnight and rack it off the sediment before passing it through a jelly bag or coffee filter. Two or three passes is realistic; forcing it will only push pulp through.
- Boiling the syrupAdd sugar to the boiling juice off the heat first, stir until fully dissolved, then return it to a boil briefly. Continual stirring matters because undissolved sugar on the bottom scorches and taints the whole batch.
- BottlingThe syrup is acidic and very high in sugar, but the recipe gives no processing step; it says only to let it cool and place it in bottles to be sealed. Use clean bottles, cap them, and either water-bath process them or keep them refrigerated and use within a few months; discard any bottle that ferments or gasses.
- Yield and servingThe home batch above gives roughly 2 1/2 pints of syrup. "Less than half an inch of syrup for a tumblerful" comes to something on the order of one to three tablespoons depending on how wide the glass is; it is also good over shaved ice or topped with soda water.
Household fruit syrups were the backbone of summer drinking in Italian homes before bottled soft drinks: a concentrated, self-preserving juice kept in the pantry and let down with cold water by the glass. This book was published in English in 1919. The same kind of syrup served for granite and sorbetti as well as for a tumbler of acqua e ribes. The added citric acid is a mark of its date rather than of poverty of flavour: Italy, and Sicily in particular, supplied most of the world's citric acid, made from lemon juice, until mould-fermentation processes displaced the trade from about 1920, so crystalline acid was a cheap and familiar grocery item in an Italian kitchen. Currants ferment readily on their own wild yeasts, and a brief spontaneous ferment before pressing is an old clarifying practice.