17th century – Page 5

Apricot Jam

I’m a big fan of the sharp-sweet tang of apricots, and with a respectable amount of pectin, there’s no need to Faff About™ adding any extra. The small quantity lemon juice helps anyway, both in the set and in sharpening the flavour of the apricots.

This method, gleaned from several hand-written 17th century manuscripts, is slightly longer than your regular jam-making session might be, but it is seriously low on effort. Start-to-finish, it’s about 24 hours, but of that, there’s maybe only 1 hour of actually doing anything – bonus!

The result is so vibrant, so delicious, you’ll wish you’d made more – however many jars you make. I bought 6 x 350g punnets – and made six jars. One jar of finished jam for every 350g of raw fruit is also a handy way to work out how many jars your going to need. As a precaution, I always have one jar extra, all cleaned, heated and ready to go, in case of an overabundance. I’ve scaled the quantities down to use just 1 kg of fresh, pitted fruits (so 3 punnets from the shop), so it’s a little easier to scale up/down.

This method involves first macerating (or soaking) the fruit in sugar for several hours (or even overnight). The sugar draws out the juice from the fruit, and in turn a little of the sugar is absorbed. This absorption of sugar will help to firm up the fruit and keep it from disintegrating during the necessary boiling later on.

That being said, this is not a solid jam that has to be crowbar’d out of the jar (a particular dislike of mine). It’s definitely leaning more towards the conserve, although having sliced the fruit to manageable bite-sizes, I think that disqualifies it from the traditional definition of conserve (i.e. whole fruit in syrup).

ANYHOO….

Here’s how it goes:

Apricot Jam

3 x 350g punnets of Bergeron (for preference, but not compulsory) apricots, to give 1kg of prepared fruit
800g granulated sugar
Juice of 2-3 lemons
Day 1

Rinse the apricots and cut into halves, top to bottom, and remove the stone.
Layer the apricot halves, sugar and the juice of 2 of the lemons in a large bowl ensuring the cut surfaces of the apricots are covered with sugar.
Cover the bowl with cling film and set aside for 8-10 hours, or overnight.
Mop brow and declare loudly to any interested parties “This jam-making is EXHAUSTING! I must have a REST and watch a FILM”.
Put feet up.

8 hours later, or next morning if you started at night

Gently slide the apricot mixture (which will probably be quite runny by now) into a preserving pan and warm gently, until all the sugar is melted.
Try and avoid stirring, as the fruit will still be very fragile and might begin to break apart with too much spoon action.
When all the sugar is melted, bring the mixture to a boil.
As soon as it boils, remove the pan from the heat and gently pour the fruit mixture back into the bowl.
Re-cover with cling film and set aside overnight.
Mop brow and put feet up as above.

12-14 hours later

Here’s where things might get a little too Faffy™ for your liking, feel free to skip the next part if you prefer a slightly more rustic jam.

Removing the skins
- Strain the fruit from the syrup. I prefer to lift the aricot gently with a skimmer, to avoid squishingthem too much, but you can pour it through a sieve if you like.
- By this time, after their overnight soaking, the skins should be wrinkled and easy to separate from the flesh of the apricots. I usually start by picking up an apricot half by the skin in my left hand and then using a small, sharp knife to ease the flesh away. Sometimes the cut edge of the apricot next to the skin has hardened and needs a little encouragement to come free. If your apricots have a slightly thicker skin, this may not be as easy as described. In this case, give up.. Persevering will only mash the apricots to mush.
- Discard skins.
Using some sharp scissors, cut the now skin-free apricots into strips about 0.5-1cm wide. Again, feel free to skip this if so inclined. It just makes the jam easier to spread. Set fruit aside for now.
Once the fruit is prepared, it’s time to boil the syrup to setting point.
But before you start heating it, taste. I like a particularly sharp jam, so I tend to add the juice of another lemon at this stage if necessary. Taste the syrup and make your own decision.
Also, put 2 saucers in the freezer. These will be used later to test whether your jam has reached setting point.
Pour all the syrup into the preserving pan and bring to a simmering boil. Keep an eye on it, as too high a heat may cause it to boil over.
Skim the froth from the top of the simmering syrup – removing this will help give your finished jam that jewel-like clarity. Don’t throw the foam away, it’s still delicious, just bubbly. Enjoy on toast with some salty feta or goats cheese – NOM!
Setting point is reached at 105°C, when the excess water has evaporated – there will be a distinct lack of steam coming from the pan, but use a thermometer to double-check.
Add the apricots, sliding them gently into the syrup. It will immediately go off the boil, and as there will be quite a lot of syrup clinging to the apricots themselves, it will take several minutes to come back to setting point.
Use this time to wash your jam jars, rinse and arrange onto a baking sheet, together with their lids.
Put the jars into a cold oven, and turn the heat to 100°C, 80°C Fan.
When the jam has reached setting point for the second time, draw the pan to one side away from the heat and test the jam by putting a teaspoon onto one of the cold saucers from the freezer. Return the plate to the freezer for a minute or two then remove and slowly push a finger through the cooled jam. If the surface wrinkles, then the jam is done. If not, return to the heat for a few more minutes and test again.
Once the jam is set to your satisfaction, turn off the heat and leave it to cool a little. You want it to be cool enough to begin to form a thin skin on the surface. This means that it is starting to set, and you should put it in jars. Depending on how big a batch you’re making, this could be as long as 20 minutes. Have a cuppa while waiting!
Stir the jam gently, to distribute the fruit throughout the syrup. Now that the jam has cooled a little, the fruit will stay suspended evenly. Stirring when the jam is too hot will do nothing, and pouring too-hot jam into jars will just make all the fruit float to the top.
Remove the hot and now dry jars from the oven and, using a jam funnel, pour your jam into the jars. You might want to use oven gloves to hold the jar steady. Fill the jars as close as possible to the top – to within 5mm at least (bacteria love air gaps, so you want to keep them as small as possible).
Screw the lids on tightly and then wipe off any spillage from the outside of the jars. Leave to cool completely before labelling.

Candied Peel

17th century, Preserves

A forgotten art in British preserving is home-made candied peel. ‘But I can buy that!’ you shriek. Yes, I know. But if you’ve ever tasted fresh candied peel made with nothing more than sugar, peel and water – you’d understand. I used to hate store-bought candied peel, and avoided anything that included it, but home-made just blows it out of the water. The explosion of citrus flavour is amazing. The beauty of making it yourself is that you can candy any citrus peel you like, and not be limited to just orange and lemon. So here, for anyone who fancies having a go, is how to do it, gleaned from 17th century manuscript recipe books. It’s not difficult or complicated, but it is a bit repetitive. But make a decent amount at one time, and you won’t have to repeat it for a good few months. Oh – and it’ll make your house smell amazing.

How To Candy Peel

Citrus fruit of choice
Sugar
Water

Remove the skin from the fruit. Slice off the top and bottom (to make a flat surface to stand the fruit on) and then cut the peel from the sides of the fruit by slicing downwards. Keep as much of the pith as possible.
Scrape any flesh and membranes from the fruit rind. Don’t worry if you can’t get it all, it’ll become easier after the peel has been boiled. Leave the pith intact – it’s the pith absorbing the sugar that keeps the rind juicy and helps prevent it becoming hard.
Place the rind into a pan large enough to hold it plus an inch of water. Cover with clean water.
Bring water to a boil and boil for a minute or two then drain.
Rinse the peel thoroughly, and also scrub the sides of the saucepan thoroughly as well. Why? The bitterness of the peel comes from the citrus oil in the skin of the fruit. Bringing the water to the boil helps release this oil, but it then floats on the top of the water, coats the rind when the water is poured off, and also congeals onto the sides of the pan. If you don’t rinse the peel and scrub the pan well, you just end up basically boiling the peel in the bitter citrus oil, which kinda defeats the whole purpose of repeated boilings.
Repeat until the peels are semi translucent and very tender. This will greatly depend on the type and condition of the fruit itself, but as a rough guide, lemons = 4 times, oranges = 5 times, grapefruit = 6 times.
Leave in a colander to drain well.
While the peel is draining, make some sugar syrup: mix 1 part water to 2 parts sugar. 500ml water to 1kg sugar is straightforward, but might leave you with a lot of leftovers, if you’re not making much peel. Not very helpful I’m afraid, but to my mind, it is better to have a little extra syrup, than have to make more once you’ve added the peels because there isn’t enough. I usually guesstimate by eye – and use non-standard measures (i.e. large mug or jug) and just measure by volume.
Heat the sugar and water slowly until the sugar is dissolved, then bring to a boil and continue to heat until the mixture is clear.
Squeeze excess water from the peels by pressing them between several layers of kitchen roll – or I find that using a clean hand towel works best – they’re surprisingly soggy peels!
Scrape off any remaining flesh and membranes using the side of a teaspoon and cut the peels into 5mm strips.
Once the syrup is clear, drop in the drained peel. Make sure that there is enough syrup to allow all of the rinds to be submerged.
Bring syrup and rind to a boil then cover and put onto the lowest heat. Let it stew gently until the rinds become translucent and jewel-like (almost like coloured glass). Stir occasionally. This takes about an hour. Don’t be tempted to turn up the heat to speed things along, it’ll just harden the peel.
Store the candied peel in screw-top jars, making sure it’s completely covered by the syrup. This will keep it moist until required, and the high sugar content of the syrup will act as a preservative. When you need to use it in a recipe, rinse off the excess syrup and pat dry with a paper towel.
Any excess syrup can be bottled and saved to drizzle over cakes or desserts. It will have a wonderful flavour.

Roast Haunch of Venison

17th century, Game

Mary Perrot, 1695

A haunch of venison is a glorious thing and very evocative of grand dining halls and long trestle tables of feasting lords and ladies. It’s also very straightforward to roast – you could simply follow the cooking times and temperatures for beef – but it is important to bear in mind that, venison is extremely lean in comparison, which means it can be prone to drying out if the heat is too harsh.

A great many of the old manuscript recipes I’ve read opt to slow-cook venison in wine and butter under a coarse paste of flour and water to keep all the moisture sealed within. However, I’ve selected this recipe because not only is it very straightforward, but you can also choose how elaborate you wish to make it: a simple, unadorned roast or embellished with a savoury herb stuffing.

I liked the two unusual details which address the potential problem of drying out your joint: brushing with beaten egg-white and then basting with cream. The egg-white seals the joint as it cooks and the cream contains just enough richness to keep the outsides moist, and then caramelise into a richly-flavoured sauce.

Roast Haunch of Venison

1 boneless haunch of venison
1 large egg-white
1 litre double cream

Stuffing
1 bunch mixed herbs – parsley, rosemary, thyme, winter savoury, pennyroyal, etc.
100g soft white breadcrumbs
50g fresh suet
5 anchovy fillets, rinsed and chopped finely
3 large yolks
salt
pepper

Mix the ingredients for the stuffing into a smooth paste and season with salt and pepper.
Unroll your venison and spread the stuffing mixture over the inside of the meat.
Re-roll your joint and tie firmly with butcher’ twine.
Weigh your stuffed joint and calculate the cooking time. If you like your venison medium-rare, then just 10 minutes per 500g is sufficient. For medium-well, you should calculate at 15 minutes for every 500g. For something inbetween, select something between these two times.
Whisk the egg-white and paint over the outside of the joint, making sure the whole surface is covered. The egg-white will cook quickly and form a protective seal, thereby helping the joint to retain moisture.
Put your joint onto a rack in a roasting tin. If you don’t have a meat rack, slice 2 or 3 onions in half and arrange, cut side down, in the middle of the tin. Arrange your joint on top of the onions.
Put your roasting tin into the oven and turn the heat to 200°C/180°C Fan, Gas Mark 6.
After 15 minutes, open the oven door and pour over the cream. Baste the joint every 15 minutes until done. If you have a thermometer, the internal temperature should range from 52°C (rare) to 60°C(medium).
Remove the joint and wrap in foil to rest for 20 minutes. Add a couple of tea towels or a hand towel for etra insulation if you think it might take longer to bring all the elements of your meal together.
Remove the onions, if using, and season the cream and meat juices left in the pan to make the sauce.