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Crab Apple Jelly
Wash the crab apples; if large cut them in halves, discarding the stems. Cover with boiling water and let cook until soft throughout, then store as apple juice or make into jelly as apple jelly is made.
This is a cross-reference recipe: it assumes you have already read the book's apple jelly directions and only tells you what is different about crab apples. The important differences are that crab apples are smaller, harder, tarter and much richer in pectin than dessert apples.
- Do not peel or coreThe skins, cores and seeds hold most of the pectin, which is why the recipe says only to wash and halve. Halving large fruit is for even cooking, not for cleaning out the middles.
- How much waterThe recipe says only to cover with boiling water and gives no quantity; modern guides commonly suggest about 1 cup of water per pound of firm crab apples. Too much water gives thin juice that has to be boiled down, which dulls the colour.
- "Soft throughout"Usually 20 to 30 minutes at a gentle simmer. Mash lightly toward the end. Hard, glassy centres mean the pectin has not been released.
- StrainingDrip through a scalded jelly bag or several layers of cheesecloth without squeezing. Pressing the pulp forces starch and fine solids through and the jelly turns cloudy.
- Sugar and finish, since the original omits themStandard practice for the period and now: 3/4 to 1 cup sugar per cup of juice, boiled hard in small batches until it sheets from a spoon, about 220F at sea level. Crab apples are high enough in pectin and acid that no added pectin or lemon is needed.
- "Store as apple juice"This appears to mean putting up the strained juice to make jelly later in the season. Follow a current tested water-bath process for apple juice; the instruction here gives no processing times or jar treatment.
- YieldAbout 4 lb of crab apples gives roughly 5 cups of juice; the finished number of half-pint jars varies with how far the jelly is boiled.
- ColourRed-skinned crab apples give the familiar rose-pink jelly; yellow and green varieties come out pale amber.
Crab apples were often grown as a dooryard fruit: too sour and astringent to eat out of hand, but so high in pectin and acid that they set almost by themselves, which made them a favored household jelly fruit before commercial pectin was sold in the 1910s and 1920s. Cooks also used crab apple or green apple juice as a pectin "stock" to stiffen jellies made from low-pectin fruits like strawberry or peach. The terseness of this entry is characteristic of preserving manuals of the era, which taught one master method, then handled other fruits in a sentence each, on the assumption that the reader had worked through the chapter in order.