Home › Jellies and Jams › Crab Apple Jelly
Crab Apple Jelly
Wash and quarter large Siberian crabs, but do not core, cover to the depth of an inch or two with cold water, and cook to a mush; pour into a coarse cotton bag or strainer, and when cool enough, press or squeeze hard, to extract all the juice. Take a piece of fine Swiss muslin or crinoline, wring out of water, spread over a colander placed over a crock, and with a cup dip the juice slowly in, allowing plenty of time to run through; repeat this process twice, rinsing out the muslin frequently. Allow the strained juice of four lemons to a peck of apples, and three quarters of a pound of sugar to each pint of juice. Boil the juice from ten to twenty minutes; while boiling sift in the sugar slowly, stirring constantly, and boil five minutes longer. This is generally sufficient, but it is always safer to "try it," and ascertain whether it will "jelly." This makes a very clear, sparkling jelly.-Mrs. Carol Gaytes, Riverside, Ill.
A pectin-free jelly that relies entirely on the fruit's own set, which is why the cores and skins stay in the pot. The instructions are sound; the units and the sealing are what need translating.
- A peck of applesA peck is a dry measure of about 10 to 12 lb of crab apples, which will yield roughly 4 to 6 pints of strained juice depending on how hard you press. The juice of four lemons to that quantity works out to about 2 tablespoons per pint.
- Siberian crabsUsually identified as Malus baccata, though nineteenth-century nurseries applied the name loosely to M. prunifolia and various hybrids. Any tart crab apple works; the point is high acid and high pectin, and much of the pectin sits in the cores and skins the recipe tells you not to remove.
- Swiss muslin and crinolineBoth fine, stiff open-weave dress fabrics (crinoline was often stiffened with horsehair rather than being pure cotton). A doubled jelly bag or four layers of fine cheesecloth over a colander does the same job. Wringing it out in water first keeps the cloth from drinking your juice.
- Squeeze, then strainThe hard press extracts the most juice but forces pulp through, which is why the juice is then re-strained twice by dipping rather than pouring. Do not hurry that part and do not stir the cloth; the sparkle the recipe promises comes from letting it drip.
- SugarThree quarters of a pound of sugar per pint of juice is about 1 3/4 cups per 2 cups juice. Warming the sugar first, or sifting it in slowly as directed, keeps the boil from stalling.
- "Try it"The jelly test: a candy thermometer at 220F at sea level, or a spoonful chilled on a cold plate that wrinkles when pushed. Crab apple pectin varies enough by season and ripeness that the stated ten to twenty minutes plus five is a guide, not a rule.
- SealingThe period practice assumed here is glasses covered with paper or similar covers, which is no longer considered sound storage. Fill hot into sterilised jars and follow a current water-bath canning schedule for jelly, or refrigerate and use within a few weeks.
Crab apples earned their place in nineteenth-century American pantries because they set reliably without any added pectin, which was not sold commercially until the 1910s. A cook working in the 1870s, when Buckeye Cookery was circulating, had no packet to fall back on and chose fruit for its gelling power: crabs, currants, quinces, underripe grapes. The Siberian crab named here was widely planted in the Midwest as a hardy dooryard tree, valued for hardiness breeding and as rootstock, so its fruit was abundant and nearly free, which is exactly the sort of economy the Buckeye compilers favoured. The recipe's obsession with straining, three passes through wrung-out muslin, reflects a period in which a jelly was judged first by whether light passed through it.