A Thing-A-Week Part 27: Conserve of Strawberries

From "Delights for Ladies"

50. To make conserve of Prunes of Damsons

Take ripe Damsons: put them into scalding water: Let them stand a while: then boile them over the fire till they break: then strain out the water thorow a colander and let them stand therein to coole: then strain the Damsons thorough the colander, taking away the stones and skinnes: then set the pulp over the fire againe, and put thereto a good quantity of red wine, and boil them well to a stiffenesse, ever stirring them up and down; and when they bee almost sufficiently boyled, put in a convenient proportion of sugar: stirre all well together and after put it in your gally-pots.

51. To make conserve of Strawberries.

First, seethe them in water, and then cast away the water and strain them: then boile them in white wine, and work as before in damson; or else strain them being ripe: then boile them in wine and sugar until they be stiffe.

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Redaction:

One of my favorite foods from the modern world are gummi style candies. While I know that it is unlikely that I will be able to ever document gummi bears as we know them today, I decided that it would be interesting to explore all the different way fruit was preserved in period from candying to conserves and gelatins.

I decided to make the conserve of strawberries mostly because it required few ingredients and they were all things I could find easily. I started by boiling the strawberries. I like to use frozen strawberries (I have found a high quality brand that delivers far better results then I am able to get in the produce section) but because the freezing process already weakens the berries cell structure the boiling step sort of became unnecessary. I realized I was loosing color by doing this so I strained them and mashed the fruit up instead so I would essentially have the desired fruit pulp from the conserve of damsons. To make up for the color lost I added a small amount of red wine with the white (I estimate that there was between 1.5 to 2 cups total wine added). I have seen this done in other fruit compotes from period to enhance color and thus felt it was an okay decision. I then boiled the fruit in white wine until it was completely broken down and
added 4 cups of sugar. The 4 cups I used was based on a modern jam recipe that didn't use pectin. My hope was to get something that was somewhat thick and I wanted to avoid too much trial and error. I brought it up to a rolling boil to thicken it and then removed it from the heat to cool. I poured it into a pan (thought it could easily be jarred) and also a small mold more to see how it held up. It didn't but I wasn't surprised. The flavor was excellent. Really amazing. The wine brought a flavor somewhat different from modern jams but it was still nice and rich. The color is beautifully dark so I may keep the red wine in for sheer aesthetic purposes.

A lot of jams I have made in the past have used lemon juice and it is amazing how differently the fruit tastes without this ingredient. I like lemon juice because I personally feel it enhances a fruits natural taste. This may have been why there was variation in using the wine.