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Apple Mint Jelly
Cut the apples in quarters, removing imperfections. Barely cover with boiling water, put on a cover and let cook, undisturbed, until soft throughout. Turn into a bag to drain.
For a quart of this apple juice set three cups of sugar on shallow dishes in the oven to heat.
Set the juice over the fire with the crushed leaves and stalks from a bunch of mint; let cook twenty minutes, then strain into a clean saucepan. Heat to the boiling point, add the hot sugar, and let boil till the syrup jellies.
Tint with green color-paste very delicately.
Have ready three to five jelly glasses on a cloth in a pan of boiling water. Let the glasses be filled with the water; pour out the water and turn in the jelly. When cooled a little, remove to a board or table.
Crême de Menthe Jelly Select apples with a green or yellow skin; cut them into quarters, discarding all imperfections; add water, to nearly cover them, cover closely and let simmer, turning them occasionally, that all may be softened. Drain in a bag and measure the liquid. For each cup take three fourths a cup of sugar and for each eight cups a cup of crême-de-menthe cordial. Heat the sugar in the edge of the oven, leaving the door open that the sugar may not burn. Heat the apple juice to the boiling point as quickly as possible, let boil rapidly, uncovered, twenty minutes, skimming as needed, then add the hot sugar; let boil until it jellies; remove from the fire, stir in the cordial and green color-paste or liquid to secure the shade of green desired, then turn into glasses.
Two versions of the same idea: tart apple stock set with sugar, flavoured either with fresh mint or with crême de menthe. Everything hinges on the apples, since they supply all the pectin and acid.
- Use underripe applesGreen, hard windfalls or cooking apples such as Bramley, Granny Smith or crabapples give far more pectin than sweet dessert fruit. Include the cores, skins and stems; that is where most of the setting power sits. No added pectin is needed if the fruit is tart and firm.
- Quantities, plainlyA quart of juice is 4 cups. The first recipe uses 3 cups sugar to a quart of juice; the second uses a more conventional 3/4 cup sugar per cup of juice, plus 1 cup crême de menthe per 8 cups of juice. "A bunch of mint" is genuinely vague; about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of loosely packed crushed leaves and stems per quart of juice is a reasonable reading.
- Heating the sugarWarming sugar in shallow dishes in the oven keeps the boiling juice from dropping off the boil when the sugar goes in. The book gives no temperature; the second version's 'edge of the oven, leaving the door open' shows the heat is meant to be gentle enough not to scorch it. It is not decorative; it shortens the cooking and protects the colour. Stir once or twice so it heats evenly and does not caramelise at the edges.
- Do not drip the bag under pressure"Turn into a bag to drain" means let it hang and drip, ideally several hours or overnight. Squeezing forces starch and pulp through and gives cloudy jelly, which matters here because the whole point is a clear green.
- Judging the set"Boil till the syrup jellies" is the sheet test: the last drops fall from a cold spoon in a curtain rather than singly. A thermometer reading of 220F at sea level, or 8F above the boiling point of water where you are, is the same moment. Overshooting turns the jelly stiff and dulls the mint.
- Mint, and when to add itTwenty minutes of simmering with the leaves extracts colour and a slightly bitter, hay-like depth; the fresh top notes boil away. For a brighter flavour, steep the crushed mint in the hot juice off the heat for 15 minutes and strain instead. In the cordial version the crême de menthe is stirred in only after the pan leaves the fire, which has the effect of preserving its flavour and much of its alcohol.
- ColourThe book calls for 'green color-paste', or in the second version paste or liquid: a concentrated commercial colouring. Modern gel food colouring works the same way; add it at the very end, from the tip of a skewer, since the jelly reads much greener in the glass than in the pan.
- SealingThe book's method of filling boiling-hot sterilised glasses and simply letting them cool is not a shelf-stable seal. Either process filled half-pint jars in a boiling water bath according to current guidance, or treat these as refrigerator jellies and keep them cold, using them within a few weeks.
- YieldA quart of apple juice with 3 cups of sugar fills the three to five jelly glasses the recipe calls for; it does not give their size. Serve with lamb, mutton or a strong cheese rather than on toast.
Mint jelly belongs to the tradition of serving mint with roast lamb, though in Britain that tradition ran mainly to vinegar-based mint sauce, and the set jelly is more strongly associated with American tables; apples were the obvious vehicle because they set reliably and taste of almost nothing once the mint is in. Books of this era treated apple juice as a workhorse stock for flavoured jellies of every kind, tinted and scented to match a menu, and the crême de menthe variation sits alongside a wider taste for cordial-flavoured sweets and wine jellies. The instruction to tint the jelly is a reminder that colour was considered part of the recipe, and commercial colour pastes were sold to home cooks. Note too the care taken over scalding the glasses in boiling water.