Currant-Cake, or Black Rob
Ingredients
Directions
Make the juice
Bruise the blackberries in a brass pan over heat until you can bear your hand in it.
Remove from heat and squeeze the juice through a fine strainer.
Measure the juice and add 4 ounces of raw sugar for each pint of juice.
Boil the mixture for 45 minutes.
Dry and store
Spread the mixture thinly on saucers and place them before the fire to dry, turning once a day for three days.
Store the dried mixture between folds of paper in a dry place.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Blackberries
- Provide the fruit flavour and colour that the juice carries into the finished cake.
- Raw sugar
- Sweetens the juice and, as it thickens on boiling, helps the mixture set and keep.
The step that matters
Boil the mixture for 45 minutes. Long boiling concentrates the juice and sugar, driving off water so the mixture thickens and dries rather than spoiling. Stopping early leaves too much moisture for the later drying and storage to work.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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