Following is my documentation for a Peach Ginger Conserve entered into the AS52 Harvest
Raid Arts & Science Competition - Theme: The Harvest
In keeping with this year’s theme I decided to make
something with a fruit harvested from our own homestead orchard. As we were
blessed with many peaches this year I choose to make a peach ginger conserve,
modernly called a jam.
Some background on
period preserves:
While preserving fruits has always been a staple of medieval
kitchen, looking deeper into the subject I found that preserving fruit as a jam
was not. The word "jam" began to creep into manuscript cookery-books
in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, and into the printed ones early
in the eighteenth. It might have had a Middle Eastern origin, as there is an
Arab word "jam" which means "close-packed" or "all
together". From its more general usage in English for things that were
jammed against one another, the word passed into the realm of confectionery, to
indicate those preserves where soft fruits cooked with sugar were crushed
together, rather than sieved, and could thus be described as
"jammed", or "in a jam".
In period, fruits were preserved in sweet, spiced syrups of
wine and sugar or honey, or in the form of solid marmalade's. Syrup preserves
are found in sources starting at Apicius,
a collection of 4-5th century Roman cookery recipes, and solid
marmalade recipes have been found as early as the 14th century. The
spreadable soft-fruit preserve we currently know as jams & jellies are
usually sealed up in preserving jars or cans of some kind, which is necessary
to avoid spoilage like mold. Recipes for soft jams and jellies are mostly found
from the 18th century up, when canning also became a possibility. A
storage technique which could have been used in period, and has been post
period, is using some kind of vessel like a ceramic jar, topped with a brandy
soaked disk of parchment, and covered with melted lard or beeswax.
An interesting nugget is the idea that the word “marmalade”
originally came from “Marie malade”, or sick Mary, because marmalade was
regularly made for Mary Queen of Scots to keep her healthy. The word marmalade
actually comes via French from the Portuguese marmelada and means quince jelly. The earliest reference to
marmalade is from 1524 - 18 years before the birth of Queen Mary – when one box
of marmalade was presented to the King (it was an expensive delicacy). The French
condoignac and chardequynce are antecedents of the marmalade we know today and are
themselves descendants from the cidonitum
of 4th century Palladius.
The medieval malomellus was a term
used both for the fruit quince and for the conserve, and the modern Portuguese
for the fruit is still marmelo.
To recap:
Preserves (like
halved peaches in syrup) are period.
Dry Marmalade
(more akin to fruit leather than what we recognize today) is period.
Wet Marmalade
(like the British orange marmalade, with rind) is post period.
Solid Jelly is
period (but probably would not be stored overly long).
Soft Jam is post
period.
MY RECIPE:
3 ½ pounds of peaches, peeled, pitted and chopped.
5 cups of sugar
¼ cup of lemon juice
½ cup crystallized ginger
The fruit is combined with the sugar, ginger and lemon juice
and heated in a large heavy saucepan. It is stirred until all the sugar is dissolved
and boiled slowly until the mixture thickens and the fruit becomes translucent.
Remove from heat, skim as necessary, and process for 10 minutes in a
boiling-water-bath canner.
This recipe is a mix of “Old Fashioned Peach Preserves” and
“Ginger Jam” from The Big Book of
Preserving the Harvest.
Because this conserve is meant to be preserved, as advised
by the FDA I used a modern conserving recipe to make sure it cans safely. All
ingredients taken separate were available in period, including the lemon juice,
but due to the lack of canning technology not necessarily used in this manner.
The quinces in the period recipe are used to thicken the marmalade until it is
solid as it is very high in pectin.
PERIOD INSPIRATION RECIPES:
This 15th
century Portuguese recipe indicates peaches were used in conserves:
60 - Pessegada. Cortem ao meio duas partes de pêssego e uma
de marmelo, e levem-nas a cozer, em separado. Depois que estiverem cozidas,
passem tudo por uma peneira fina. A seguir, ajuntem tanto açúcar quanto for o
peso da massa,
e levem o tacho ao fogobrando. Deixem atingir o ponto de marmelada, e coloquem
o doce em caixetas.
Peach Marmalade. Cut in half two parts of peach and one of
quince, and cook them separately. After they are cooked, put everything through
a fine sieve. Next, add a like amount of sugar to the weight of the paste, and
take the pot to a low heat. Allow it to reach the point of marmalade, and place
the confection in little boxes.
From A Treatise of Portuguese Cuisine from the
15th Century.
This 16th
– 17th century recipe indicates boiling to candy height (interpreted as sheeting):
#S112 TO MAKE A PASTE OF PEACHES
Take peaches & boyle them tender, as you did your
apricocks, & strayne them. then take
as much sugar as they weigh & boyle it to candy height. mix ym together, & make it up into paste
as you doe yr other fruit. soe dry them
and use it at your pleasure. Peel and slice peaches. Bring them to a boil over
medium heat in a thick pan. Cover pan,
stirring occasionally. Add a little
rosewater if desired.
From A Booke of Sweetmeats, Martha
Washington's Booke of Cookery,
1550-1650.
This 1608 recipe indicates
ginger was used in spicing conserves:
27. To make rough-red Marmelade of Quinces, commonly called
lump-Marmelade, that shall looke as red as any rubie.
Pare ripe and well coloured Peare-quinces, and cut them in
pieces like dice, parboile them very tender, or rather reasonably tender in
faire water, then powre them into a Colender, and let the water runne from them
into a cleane Bason, then straine that water through a strainer into a Posnet
[skillet], for if there be any grauell in the Quinces, it will be in that water
: Then take the weight of the Quinces in double refined Sugar very fine, put
halfe thereof into the Posnet, into the water with a graine of Muske, a slice
or two of Ginger tied in a thrid, and let it boile couered close, vntill you
see your sugar come to the colour of Claret wine, then vncouer it and take out
your Ginger, and so let it boile vntill your sirupe being to consume away, then
take it off the fire, and pomice it with a ladle, and so stirre it and coole
it, and it will looke thick like tart-stuffe, then put in your other halfe of
your Sugar, and so let it boile, always stirring it vntill it come from the
bottome of the Posnet, then box it, and it will looke red like a Rubie, the
putting of the last Sugar brings it to an orient colour.
A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen, 1608
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Costenbader, Carol W. The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest.
Storey Publishing, 1997.
Gomes, Fernanda (trans.). A Treatise of Portuguese Cuisine from the 15th Century.
https://web.archive.org/.../Faerisa/portuguese15thC.html
Hess, Karen (transcriber) Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery. Columbia
University Press, New York, 1981.
Holloway, Johnna. A
Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen (1608). 2011.
http://www.medievalcookery.com/notes/1608closet.pdf
Stefan’s Florilegium.
http://www.florilegium.org/.../FOOD.../jams-jellies-msg.html
http://www.florilegium.org/.../FOOD.../marmalades-msg.html
Wilson, C. Anne. The
Book of Marmalade. University
of Pennsylvania Press,
1999
And the cooks at the SCA
Cooks facebook group. Thank you!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/604657969575143/
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