Summer is winding down and time seems to move at lightning speed and at a glacial pace simultaneously. I have a hundred projects in my head, some of which I’m working on, others that are only a flicker in my imagination. With my head full of ideas, worries, and plans, time just got away from me this month. I blinked on August 15th and next thing I knew it was nearing the end of the month, leaving me virtually no time for any sort of recipe to share with you that required multiple tests.
And so, here I am, with a very simple recipe for cherry jam from the 17th century. Just as well, as we hit the tail end of cherry season and the last opportunity of the year to put up cherries at their best.
The recipe, titled “Marmulate of Cherries”, comes from the book titled The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, published in London in 1669 by the descendants of Kenelm Digby a few years after his death. Digby was a man of many interests, including natural philosophy, astrology, alchemy, and kitchen arts and science. He was even a privateer at one point. A man of many hats and peculiar interests, his contemporaries considered him an eccentric. He was also on-again, off-again Catholic, depending on what suited him best in the Protestant world he inhabited. To be fair to Digby, the first half of the 1600s in England were not for the faint of heart…or for Catholics. Civil wars, regicide, the rise of Oliver Cromwell (with whom Digby apparently had an unlikely friendship) and his puritanical ideas. Kenelm Digby’s father was one of the men hanged, drawn, and quartered in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, the failed attempt by a band of Catholics to assassinate the Protestant King James I, when Kenelm was just a tot.
Thanks to Digby, eccentric or not, we have one of the most extensive sources, if not THE most extensive, on making honey and fruit-based alcoholic drinks from the early modern period. Half of the book is dedicated to recipes for mead, metheglin, hydromel, sack, ale, wine, etc. These drink recipes is what Digby is mostly known for in historical cooking circles, but the other half of The Closet is on cookery recipes of all sorts, from roasts to puddings to jams and jellies and everything in between.
Many of the recipes are involved and complicated. Others, like “Marmulate of Cherries,” are easy, even for modern cooks, and well-explained for 17th century recipes. Although fruit preserves of this type had been cooked and eaten in other parts of Europe for a very long time – they have Roman and Greek origins – they were only starting to become popular in England during Digby’s time, especially when made with sugar rather than honey. This makes sense given that sugar was also becoming more popular in the English diet as a result of the work of enslaved people in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean colonies. By becoming popular, I mean, of course, with the well to do. Sugar was still, and would be for a few hundred years more, a luxury good.
“Marmulate of Cherries
Take four pound of the best Kentish Cherries, before they be stoned, to one pound of pure loaf Sugar, which beat into small Powder: stone the Cherries, and put them into your preserving pan over a gentle fire, that they may not boil, but resolve much into Liquor. Take away with the spoon much of the thin Liquor, (for else the Marmulate will be Glewy), leaving the Cherries moist enough, but not swimming in clear Liquor. Then put to them half of your Sugar, and boil it quick, and scum away the froth that riseth. When that is well incorporated and clear, strew in a little more of the Sugar; and continue doing so by little and little, till you have put in all your Sugar; which course will make the colour the finer, When they are boiled enough, take them off, and bruise them with the back of a spoon; and when they are cold, put them in pots.
You may do the same with Morello Cherries; which will have a quicker-tast, and have a fine, pure, shining dark color.
Both sorts will keep well all the year.”
When you think “marmalade,” you probably envision a citrus sugary spread, and in modern terms you would be right. Mostly. But historically, people have used the term marmalade to refer to all kinds of fruit preserves even when they didn’t include citrus. In fact, the origins of marmalade lie with quinces and not with any citrus. This is a case in which the foodstuff associated with the name has changed and narrowed with the passing of time. But not for everyone. While for English speakers marmalade conjures images of citrus fruit spreads, in Latin America and specifically the Caribbean, marmalade (mermelada) is the name for any number of sweetened fruit purees that are neither jam nor jelly. Rather, they have the consistency more or less of apple sauce, but thicker and richer…more sugary. Some examples are guava marmalade and mango marmalade, which are popular in places like Cuba where they are eaten as dessert, often with cream cheese. Marmalade used to refer to the citrus conserve is also used, but that is not what people first think about when they think “marmalade.”
As for Digby’s recipe, it’s very straight forward and hardly needs modernizing. It’s one of those rare historical recipes that are extremely thorough in the ingredients and procedures. That said, there are some tips that will help modern cooks who are not used to making jams without pectin. First, the reason you are supposed to remove most of the liquid the cherries give up is to have a better balance of liquid to sugar, which will help set the jam. It took approximately 15 minutes for the cherries to release most of the juice. When I made the recipe, I used only one pound of cherries (approximately 3 cups) and one quarter pound of granulated sugar (½ cup). Thankfully for us, sugar these days comes already ground and we don’t have to do the work of cutting sugar pieces off the loaf and grinding it ourselves.
Since the recipe relies exclusively on the sugar to set the jam, you have to make sure to cook it to the correct point. Once you have added all the sugar, cook the jam until it passes one of the methods traditionally used to test the set of these sorts of jams and jellies. There are a few, including the sheet test and the freezer test, which don’t require thermometers. Alternatively, you can use a thermometer and cook the jelly until it reaches 218°F. For me, this took about 15 minutes, but it will vary, of course, depending on the amount of fruit you use. The National Center for Home Food Preservation has detailed instructions on how to perform these tests, so please, check them out.
As you can expect, with nothing but ripe cherries and sugar, this jam does, in fact, taste like cherries. And not the fake cherry flavor that so often plagues cherry products. Mine was a bit chunky, even though I mashed them a bit with a potato masher while I was first rendering the liquid. You can, of course, mash them further if you want a less chunky result.
I ate mine with sourdough bread, which I made myself, and the combination worked well.
As for canning, I made a small enough amount that I didn’t need to worry about long-term storage. But if you make this recipe and want to can it, just follow the canning best practices of the country where you live. They are slightly different in different countries. In the United States, follow the USDA home canning guide.
Miscellaneous
Did you know that in addition to writing, I am a photographer? In fact, I was a photographer long before I was a writer or a historian! Here you can see my (studio) food photography portfolio. If you are looking for someone to photograph your recipes, I’m available! (You can also see the rest of my portfolio on that website).