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Almack's Preserves
(Old English recipe.) Split, pare, and stone 2 dozen plums, 1 dozen apples, 1 dozen pears. Arrange them in an earthen jar in alternate layers, adding 1 pound of sugar to each pound of fruit. Set in a pan of water and stir constantly on the fire until thick, about 1 hour. When cold, cut in slices.
This is a fruit cheese rather than a jam: equal weights of sugar and fruit cooked down until stiff enough to turn out and slice. Two details carry the whole recipe — the sugar is matched to the prepared fruit by weight, and the pot never touches direct heat.
- Weigh after preparingThe recipe lists paring, splitting and stoning first, so "a pound of sugar to each pound of fruit" is best read as prepared fruit rather than as bought, though it does not say so outright. Weigh the prepared slices before you start layering, or the set will be unpredictable.
- The jar in a pan of waterAn earthen jar standing in a pan of water is a bain-marie. A heatproof bowl over simmering water, or a heavy pot set in a wider pan of water, does the same job. Direct heat scorches a 1:1 sugar mixture long before it thickens.
- What the quantities come toA count of fruit gives no fixed weight; depending on size, two dozen plums, a dozen apples and a dozen pears could be anywhere from about 6 to 10 lb before preparation, with sugar matched pound for pound to whatever the prepared fruit actually weighs. Halve or quarter the whole thing for a domestic batch.
- An hour is a minimumOver water, an hour is optimistic for that volume. Cook until a spoon drawn across the bottom leaves a track that closes only slowly and the mass pulls away from the sides in a single mound.
- Why the apples matterThe apples and plum skins supply most of the pectin and acid that set the paste; pears bring comparatively little. Do not increase the pear share at the expense of the other two.
- Setting and slicingPour the hot paste into a shallow straight-sided dish or a lightly oiled mould and leave it uncovered overnight. "Cut in slices" means it should turn out firm, like quince paste, and be served in thin slabs with cheese or cold meat.
- Keeping itThe original gives no sealing method. Wrap the set cheese closely and keep it refrigerated; traditional cellars and heavy sugar did the work that a fridge does now.
Fruit cheeses — damson, quince, apple — are among the oldest English preserves, made to use a glut and to keep in a form that could be sliced rather than spooned, the technique being to cook equal sugar and fruit over water until the mixture will hold a mould. The name has sometimes been linked to Almack's, the London assembly rooms opened in the 1760s and, for a generation around the Regency, the most exclusive social address in the country; nothing in the recipe itself supports the connection, and Almack could equally be a surname. Attaching a fashionable name to a preserve was common practice and rarely indicates any real connection to the place; the label is generally best read as a period selling point rather than documented provenance.