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Gooseberry Jam
Trim the berries, and allow 1 pound of sugar and the juice of a lemon to each pound of fruit. Bring to a boil, skim it, then cook, stirring often until thick, and it jellies on a plate. Strain through a colander, and put into jars. Strawberry or blackberry, or any other jam, is made this way.
A bare-bones jam formula of the type cooks were expected to fill in from experience. The proportions are sound; what the original leaves out is how to tell when it is done and how to keep it.
- The hinge: the plate test"Jellies on a plate" means a spoonful dropped on a chilled saucer sets and wrinkles when pushed with a finger. On a thermometer that is 220F/104C at sea level, a couple of degrees lower for each 1,000 feet of altitude. Pull it the moment it passes; gooseberry jam turns to a stiff brown paste quickly.
- TrimTopping and tailing — snipping the dried blossom end and the stem from each berry. Tedious but worth it, since the stems stay tough through cooking.
- Which gooseberriesUse firm, slightly underripe green fruit. Gooseberries are among the most pectin-rich berries, which is why this recipe needs no added pectin. Fully ripe dessert gooseberries set less reliably.
- Equal sugar and the lemonA true 1:1 by weight, so a pound of trimmed fruit takes a pound (about 2¼ cups) of granulated sugar. The lemon juice is not for flavour but for acid to help the pectin set; keep it even if the fruit tastes sharp already.
- Straining through a colanderPresumably to push the pulp through and leave skins and seeds behind, giving a smoother jam than a whole-fruit preserve; a colander is coarse for the job and a sieve does it better. Do it while the jam is hot, or it will not pass, and expect to lose some volume.
- Stirring and skimmingUse a wide, heavy pan and stir with a flat-edged spoon; sugar at this concentration scorches on the bottom without warning. Skim the foam once early, as the recipe directs, rather than fussing at it throughout.
- Putting it into jarsThe book assumes hot jam into hot jars sealed with wax or a screw top and eaten within the year. Current practice is to fill sterilised half-pint jars to ¼ inch of the top and process 10 minutes in a boiling-water bath, or skip that and refrigerate and use within a month.
With a Saucepan Over the Sea gathers dishes from foreign kitchens for American cooks, which is why a formula this elementary earns a place — gooseberries were a staple of British, Dutch and German preserving and needed no explanation there, but were less familiar in the United States. The origin of the name is unsettled: it may be simply goose plus berry, and the derivations from a Continental word for the fruit, or from the old pairing of gooseberry sauce with roast goose, are speculation rather than established fact. American gooseberry growing was curtailed not long after this book's era, when Ribes species were found to host white pine blister rust and many states restricted planting, which is part of why the berry is common in British preserving books and scarcer in later American ones. The closing line — that strawberry, blackberry or any other jam is made the same way — is the real subject of the entry: equal weights of fruit and sugar, acid for the set, boil to the plate test.