[Sca-cooks] Cherries, cherries and more cherries

Stephanie Ross hlaislinn at earthlink.net
Mon Jun 26 07:04:08 PDT 2006


Here are a couple of recipes for cherries from The Lucayos Cookbook, an
Elizabethan cookbook published in 1660 and discovered in the 1950's in the
Bahamas.

Preserve cherries single in jelly

Take faire Flemish cherries when they are full ripe, pull out the stones
and stalkes, then weigh them and to a pound of cherries, take a pound of
sugar beaten small. Put in ye bottom of the pan 6 or 7 spoonefulls of faire
water, then lay in the cherries and sugar. Keep some sugar to strew on them
in the boiling. Let them boile very fast still takeing up the sirrup in the
porringers to scum it, and put it in againe when they begin to looke
cleare. Have ready of the juice of red currance, a pinte to 2 pound of
cherries and to it a pound of fine sugar. Mix well together, then poure it
into ye cherries on the fire and let them boile a little. Take them up in
to glasses and place the cherries to your likeing and stand them a weeke to
settle the jelly.

Make marmalade of cherries

Take 10 or 12 pound of very good cherries; stone them into a preserveing
pan, keepe all the juice to them, then boile them on a good charcoale fire
as fast as you can - often shakeing and scumming them. When it growes
thick, stir it continually that it doe not burne. When all the juice is
dried it comes cleane from the bottom of the pan; then take it up and
weighe it in a glasse and to every pound of cherries take halfe a pound of
loafe sugar beaten and put as much water to it as will just wett it. Boile
it to sirrup and scum it, put yor cherries to it and mix well together and
set them on a gentle fire at first. Then let boile very fast keepeing
stirring, till it comes from ye bottome of the pan. Then take them off the
fire and let it coole a little. Put it in glasses and let stand in a warme
place two dayes.

Preserve coronation cherries

Take the cheeries and stone them they are fresh gathered. Then take as much
sugar finely beaten as the weight of the cherries bee; put in the bottome
of the skellet 5 spoonefulls of the sirrup of cherries or else red currants
to every pound; then put halfe your sugar and lay in your cherries and
throw a little of the other sugar up on them and set over the fire. You
must not make ye fire too hot at first, but when ye sugar is melted boile
them as fast as you can and still as your sirrup rises take it off into
silver porringers and scum it and put it in againe. With it throw in your
other sugar at several times too keep boiling till they looke cleare and in
ye boiling shake them often. When ye sirrup is enough it will hang on a
spoone like jelly. Then take them off the fire and let stand till they are
cold before you put them up. You may save a little of the sirrup to add ye
next day.



Aislinn
Et si omnes ego non.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without
civilization in between. - Oscar Wilde 





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