The recipes and household notes are transcribed from Lucile Bluford, “No Apron Strings Attached,” written for the Cooperative Publishers Association and printed in the New Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Virginia), September 16, 1933. Two weeks for the sauerkraut, six for the grape juice. The jam takes one minute. Pectin cut a long, watchful process down to minutes and made failure rare.2 It also moved a step of the work out of the kitchen and onto a manufacturer’s ledger. Convenience carries a price and a direction, and it pays to know which way it runs. Every product a household stops making is a product it has to buy.
Red Raspberry Jam Recipe
(makes 10 glasses)
Ingredients
2 quarts fully ripe red raspberries
6½ cups sugar
1 bottle fruit pectin
Paraffin, for sealing
Directions
Crush two quarts of fully ripe berries. Mix well with six and one-half cups of sugar. Bring to a full boil over a hot fire, stirring constantly before and after boiling. Boil hard for one minute, then remove from the fire and stir in the fruit pectin. Stir and skim by turns for five minutes to cool the jam and keep the fruit from floating. Pour quickly and paraffin the hot jam.
New Journal and Guide, September 16, 1933