To Preserve Rasberries

This recipe comes from an English manuscript cookbook of the early 1700s, a period when sugar preservation was both vibrant in domestic kitchens and a marker of social refinement. Women of the gentry or rising middle class would create such fruit preserves not only for flavor but to demonstrate household skill and wealth, as sugar was still an expensive commodity. Recipes like this one predate commercial pectin and modern canning, instead relying on high sugar content and careful boiling for preservation. The original text uses early modern conventions, with little punctuation and variable spelling, reflecting both the manuscript culture and evolving English culinary vocabulary. The directions are written in a stream-of-consciousness fashion, offering broad instruction to a knowledgeable housekeeper familiar with the kitchen arts.

In the early 18th century, this dish would be made with a glazed earthenware bowl (called a 'wessell'), basic metal or wood spoons for stirring, and a large pan set over the hearth or a charcoal chafing stove. The sugar would be pounded with a mortar and pestle to achieve a fine consistency. Finished preserves were cooled in basins—usually wide, shallow ceramic bowls—and stored in glass jars or covered glasses, sometimes sealed with parchment and string.