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Cherries and Currants in Syrup
Stone fine, large cherries, red ones preferred. Boil 1 1/2 pints water, and 1 pound sugar for each pound of fruit, cook 15 minutes, add the fruit and cook 20 minutes more. Strain the syrup, add to it the juice of 1 pint of currants to each 4 pounds of cherries, some brandy or maraschino, and cook 10 minutes rapidly. Pour over the fruit, and seal hot.
A straightforward European-style cherry preserve, made stronger by the currant juice, which supplies both the acidity and the pectin that cherries lack. Two things need translating: the syrup ratio, and the way it is sealed.
- The ratioThe text reads most naturally as 1 lb sugar and 1 1/2 pints (3 cups) water per pound of cherries, though 'for each pound of fruit' may attach only to the sugar. Either way it is a thin syrup by preserving standards, which would explain why it is boiled hard again at the end to concentrate it.
- Maraschino means the liqueurIn 1902 maraschino is the clear Dalmatian cherry liqueur distilled from marasca cherries, not the dyed cocktail garnish sold under that name today. A couple of tablespoons per 4 lb of fruit is in keeping; brandy works the same way, adding aroma and a little preservative help.
- Currant juiceRed currants, crushed and strained raw, give something under a cup of juice per pint of fruit. They are among the more pectin-rich fruits available, and their acid and pectin will thicken the syrup somewhat, though the result is fruit in syrup rather than a jelly. Bottled unsweetened redcurrant juice is an acceptable stand-in; cranberry is not, the flavour is wrong.
- Stoning the cherries"Stone fine, large cherries" means pit them whole, keeping the fruit intact. A hand pitter does this without splitting them. Reserve any juice lost in pitting and add it to the syrup.
- The cooking times run longTwenty minutes in syrup will collapse most modern sweet cherries into slack, faded fruit. Watch the fruit rather than the clock and pull it as soon as it turns translucent and still holds its shape, then let the strained syrup do the long boiling on its own.
- "Seal hot" is obsoleteOpen-kettle sealing, filling hot jars and inverting or waxing them, was standard practice for a century and is no longer considered reliable; the seal often forms but the headspace is not sterilised, and moulds and yeasts survive. Fill sterilised jars and process them in a boiling-water bath according to a current tested guide for cherry preserves, or skip processing entirely and keep the jars in the refrigerator, where they will hold a month or two.
With a Saucepan Over the Sea belongs to a genre popular around 1900: the American cookbook assembled from dishes gathered on European travel, offering home cooks a taste of Continental technique. Pairing cherries with currant juice is a long-standing practice in French and German preserving, where the currant does the job a commercial pectin would later do. The maraschino called for here points to Zadar on the Dalmatian coast, where the liqueur was distilled from marasca cherries and shipped across Europe as a luxury flavouring long before its name was borrowed for a jar of bright red garnish. Recipes like this one, sealed hot and stacked in the cellar, were how a household kept summer fruit on the table in February.