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Spiced Grapes (Three pounds of grapes after)
Three pounds of grapes after they are taken from the stems, pulp them and boil pulps long enough to free them from seeds. Then add the skins and two pounds of sugar, half pint of vinegar, one tablespoon cloves, tablespoon cinnamon. Let all boil together one hour.
A slip-skin grape preserve of the sort that stood beside cold meat rather than on toast. The whole method depends on the variety of grape, which the original assumes you already know.
- Use slip-skin grapesThis only works with Concord, Niagara or similar American varieties, where a squeeze pops the pulp cleanly out of the skin. Seedless table grapes from a supermarket will not separate and have no skins worth saving.
- "Pulp them"Press each grape between finger and thumb so the green pulp shoots into one bowl and the skin falls into another. Keep both; the skins carry the colour and much of the flavour.
- Freeing the seedsSimmer the pulp 8 to 10 minutes, until it breaks down and the seeds float loose, then push it through a sieve or food mill. Discard the seeds and return the strained pulp to the pan.
- Half pint of vinegarOne cup. Cider vinegar suits the fruit better than white; either should be around 5 percent acidity.
- A tablespoon of clovesA full tablespoon of ground cloves will bury everything else. Whole spices tied in cheesecloth, or a level teaspoon each of ground clove and cinnamon, gives a result modern palates read as spiced rather than medicinal.
- The hour of boilingAn hour at a steady simmer is what thickens this; no pectin is added and there is no other set. Stir often once it darkens, because the sugar catches easily near the end. It is done when a spoonful mounds slightly on a cold plate.
- Yield and keepingThe original gives no yield and no sealing instructions: refrigerate it and use within a month, or follow a current tested boiling-water-bath procedure if you intend to store it on a shelf.
- ServingSharp and dark, meant for roast pork, ham, duck or a cheese board rather than breakfast.
Sweet-and-spiced fruit pickles filled a whole chapter of American cookbooks from the 1870s to the 1920s, and the elements were familiar even if the proportions were not fixed: fruit, sugar in quantity, a splash of vinegar, cloves and cinnamon, then a long boil. They existed because a nineteenth-century dinner table wanted something acid alongside heavy roast meat, and because grapes, peaches and plums all arrived at once in quantities no household could eat fresh. The grape here is almost certainly Concord, the hardy native variety that dominated Eastern American vineyards and dooryards after its introduction in the 1850s, and whose thick skin slipping free of the pulp made the pulping-and-sieving step in this recipe a familiar autumn chore.