Wonders of Wonders – Time Travel Tuesday

The Wild Grape Jelly Worked !

I am happy to report that traveling back in time to harvest wild grapes like the peasants did in France in 1650, worked out for my jelly. Actually, peasants didn’t make jelly because they lacked sugar. Even so, I got a feel for what they’d go through to use wild grapes.

I wanted to be as frugal as a peasant (right up my alley), so I picked the free wild grapes, cleaned them myself, and used jars I had in my cabinet. I also did not use store-bought pectin. (The lack of pectin might have caused me to have lots of grape pancake syrup on hand.) I would have had 3-4 full jars, but lost a lot of juice down the drain. Even so, the jelly turned out beautifully. I was worried last night when it was still runny, but this morning, the jelly set up nice and thick. I spooned it on toast and it is perfect. The flavor is intense.

So back to my peasants – Wild grapes (Vitis vinidera sylvestris) grew in NW France in hedgerows, river valleys, and at the forest edges. Peasants sometimes gathered them for: 

Fermenting into a crude wine (thin, tart, low alcohol).

Cooking or stewing with meats.

Wrapping food in grape leaves before baking in hearth ashes.

Sweetening or preserving fruit with juice after it was boiled down into syrups

Vinegar: sour wine was deliberately encouraged to turn into vinegar, a crucial preservative.

By 1650, better grapes had been cultivated in vineyards, but they were the property of nobles and the church. So peasants drank mostly thin wine, cider, or ale.