Vintage Recipes For Jams and Preserves Fresh From Your Garden or Farmer's Market

Many recipes are easier to re-create now that we have other methods and different types of thickening agents... I use glucomannan powder. It's a natural fiber derived from the konjac root. I use it to thicken gravies and cream sauces, cutting back on cream, flour, starch or  sugars. It has no taste and works very well in small amounts. I don't like the fine texture of the flour-based thickeners found in the grocery store.

I  sometimes use the vintage recipes in exactly the more difficult ways that they were done in the original recipes. For nostalgic reasons only. Commercial jams were rationed in 1941, so thrifty housewives preserved their own from fruits grown in the Victory Gardens.

For me, nothing is easier than preserving fruit. From canned peaches suspended in syrup, to a beautiful jar of gooey preserves. I've Got This.

 Sometimes i prefer to  get it over with quickly. Other times, i resist the urge to rush, and use my vintage utensils and enamelware stockpots, pull up a cup (or 5) of my favorite herbal tea in my favorite china teapot, cup and saucer, and create a glorious mess. Just like old times.

Modern appliances make preserving an easier chore. I like using my crockpot to create jams and butters. It's pretty easy, and no big mess, splashing, or bodily harm involved. There are many crockpot preserves recipes on the web.

No matter what the recipe suggests, i will not use paraffin to seal my jars. It's good old safe canning jars, seals and lids for me. If I can find my old jelly jars that came with sour cream in them at the grocery store, i try to find a sealing lid that fits, or i make the jams to use now and not store them, unless i freeze them.

These are original recipes used in wartime and other decades, when sugar was scarce or rationed, cash was just as scarce, and  we grew most of our own food.

If you grow fruit and berries (i stick to growing berries), these are neat recipes for stockpiling for winter, or for creating gifts for sharing. I like to create my own citrus marmalades and cranberry sauces/relishes because i just don't like any that i've purchased. Large bags of Mandarin Oranges, meyer lemons, grapefruit and cranberries are frequently on sale. I don't grow those. Apple and other fruit butters are easily made in a crockpot. A bushel of apples from the farm makes a whole lot of applesauce and apple butter. I'll wager that strawberries are the most popular preserved fruit. But experimentation has shown that many non-traditional fruits can be preserved as condiments, using spices and herbs.

Some of these recipes just list the ingredients, not the process. I guess they figured you'd know how to process the end result without having to tell you. Some might be no-cook. I'm sticking to recipes that require only the simplest of processing methods - high acid fruit preserves processed via water bath canning. That averages about 25 min. of boiling the filled jars in the canner, then removing to cool. I like the sound of jar lids popping, telling me that the jars are safely sealed and can last up to 2 years in storage in a cool place. Many folks use the oven or crockpot methods of processing the jams, but i prefer the boiling water method on the gas stove.

I still have perfectly good jams and preserves that are now in their third year on the shelf. I once got 5 years out of strawberry syrups before declaring them gone. I open and do a lid test to make sure its seal is intact and air didn't get into it, an eyeball/sniff test of the contents, and take a tiny taste before actually eating it. Jams are easy for me to figure out whether they've gone over.

1916

Yes, I know. Carrots are not fruits..... but i keep coming across Carrot Jam in preserving brochures, so i'll put it here. 
A jam is a jam.
Most modern-day vegetable and Victory Gardeners have lots of carrots, 
and here's a recipe to try for something different....it sounds easy enough.

WWII Carrot Jam

One litre of grated or chopped carrots 3 cups of sugar a jar of honey 3 sliced lemons

1. Method - Add all the ingredients into a saucepan, and simmer slowly at a gentle heat. It is recommended that you stir the ingredients constantly, especially at the earlier stages of the cooking.
2. After about 20 minutes, the carrots should eventually begin to soften, and the jam will become thick.
3. To test jam is ready, place a spoonful on a chilled saucer, if it wrinkles when you push it, it is ready. 
4. Store in jars

Carrot Marmalade  c. 1915

Take two and half pounds of peeled sliced carrots (weigh after preparing). Six lemons thinly sliced, with the pips removed, a heaped saltspoonful (the spoon in my vintage salt cellar says that's 1/4 tsp) of salt and four quarts of water. 
Boil all together till they can be pulped through a sieve; say about two and a half hours; then add two pounds of sugar, and boil up until the marmalade will set.

~~~~~~~

Excerpt from 

A "DIG FOR VICTORY" Leaflet
Issued by the British Ministry of Agriculture and fisheries in 1941
on the subject of making jams:

Typical Recipes

Fruits of high setting quality, e.g., Black Currant:

• 4 lb. fruit
• 3 pints water
• 5 Ib. sugar

Remove the stems and simmer the fruit with the water for 45 minutes. Add the sugar, stir until it is dissolved and boil rapidly until setting-point is reached.

Fruits of medium setting quality, e.g., Raspberry :

• 6 lb. fruit
• 6 lb. Sugar

Heat the fruit in the pan until the juice begins to flow. Add the sugar, stir until it is dissolved and boil rapidly until setting-point is reached.

Fruits of poor setting quality, e.g., Strawberry:

• 4 lb. fruit
• 3½ lb. Sugar
• plus either 2 tablespoonfuls of lemon juice, I teaspoonful citric or tartaric acid, or ¼ pint of red currant or gooseberry juice.

Plug the strawberries and simmer them with the fruit juice or acid until the juice begins to flow. Add the sugar, stir until it has dissolved and boil rapidly until setting-point is reached.

Important Details of Jam Making

1. The fruit should be fresh and firm-ripe. Over-ripe fruit should not be used.
2. Simmer the fruit gently with a little water to soften the tissues before sugar is added.
3. After the sugar has been added, the jam should be boiled rapidly until setting-point is reached.
4. Remove the scum only when boiling is finished. Constant skimming is wasteful and unnecessary.
5. To prevent fruit rising in the jars, the jam should be allowed to cool slightly in the pan, then stirred before filling into jars.
6. Pour into clean, dry, worm jars, filling just short of overflowing. Put on waxed discs while hot, and press down over the surface.

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