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Currant Jelly
Do not pick from the stem, but carefully remove all leaves and imperfect fruit, place in a stone jar, and follow general directions; or place one pint currants, picked off the stem, and one pint sugar, in the kettle on the stove, scald well, skim out currants, and dry on plates; or make into jam with one-third currants and two-thirds raspberries, straining juice after sweetening, and cooking until it "jellies." After currants are dried put them in stone jars and cover closely.-Mrs. A. B. M.
Three ideas are packed into one paragraph here: jelly by the book's "general directions," candied currants left over from a sugar syrup, and a currant-raspberry jam. All of them lean on the fact that red currants are among the most pectin-rich fruits in the kitchen.
- The hinge: don't stem the fruit for jellyLeaving the currants on their stems saves the work of stemming, since the stems are strained out later anyway. The recipe has the fruit "picked off the stem" only for the second method; it says nothing either way for the jam.
- "Follow general directions"The book's general jelly directions run roughly: mash the fruit, heat gently until the juice runs, drain through a flannel or jelly bag without squeezing, then boil the juice with sugar. Figure about a pound of sugar (a little over 2 cups) to a pint of juice.
- Stone jarA glazed stoneware crock. It served as the vessel for heating the fruit, typically set in a kettle of water, and later as storage. Any nonreactive pot does the first job; jars with proper lids do the second.
- Until it "jellies"The gel point is 220F/104C at sea level, about 8F above the boiling point of water. The old sheet test still works: a spoonful drawn out and tipped should fall in a curtain rather than in drops. Currants need no commercial pectin.
- The dried-currant variationScalding a pint of currants with a pint of sugar and drying the fruit on plates gives candied currants. The recipe doesn't say what becomes of the sweetened syrup left behind, though it would serve for jelly.
- Storage is the weak pointThe recipe's "cover closely" refers to the dried currants in their stone jars; for jelly, period seals meant paper, a cloth, or poured melted paraffin, all of which invite surface mold over months. Process filled half-pint jars in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes, or keep small quantities refrigerated and eat them within a few weeks.
- The raspberry jam ratioOne-third currants to two-thirds raspberries; the recipe doesn't say whether by weight or measure. The currants are there for set and tartness, and the text has you sweeten first, then strain the juice.
- YieldA quart of currant juice yields roughly four or five half-pints of jelly, depending on how hard you boil it.
Red currants (Ribes rubrum) were a standard dooryard bush in the northern states when Buckeye Cookery was compiled in Ohio in the 1870s, valued precisely because they gel so readily — high in both pectin and acid, they set without any of the fussing that peaches or strawberries demand, and currant jelly became the default accompaniment to roast meats and the default patch for a dry cake. The book's method of contributed recipes signed with initials, here Mrs. A. B. M., means you get one household's practice verbatim, including its habit of running three uses together in a single breath and referring back to the "general directions" every reader was assumed to have already read. Currants grew scarcer in American kitchens in the early twentieth century, when states began restricting Ribes planting because the bushes host white pine blister rust, a disease of commercial timber; the bans have since been relaxed in many places, but the fruit never fully returned to the home garden.