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Raspberry and Currant Jelly
Extract the juice separately and use the same quantity of each, or use three fourths currants to one fourth raspberries, the raspberries being the more pronounced in flavor. Use a cup of sugar to each cup of juice. rants.
Currant Jelly (Common Method) Several extractions may be made from cur- For the first, boil the juice (drained after cooking in a double boiler or waterless cooker) twenty minutes. Have the sugar, a cup for each cup of juice, made hot in the oven; add the sugar and let boil till the mixture drops from the spoon in beads. For the second extraction, use three fourths a cup of sugar to each cup of juice.
A two-part entry: a mixed raspberry-currant jelly, then the standard method for currant jelly using successive extractions from the same fruit. Both rely entirely on the currants' own pectin and acid, so no commercial pectin is called for or wanted.
- The hinge: the bead test"Drops from the spoon in beads" means the syrup stops running off in drips and slides off in a single sheet from the edge of a cold metal spoon. On a thermometer that is 220F at sea level, about 8F above the boiling point of water; subtract roughly 1F per 500 feet of elevation.
- Use underripe fruitCurrants set on their own pectin, which is highest just before full ripeness. A proportion of slightly underripe berries gives a firmer jelly than dead-ripe fruit. Raspberries are lower in pectin than currants; the recipe itself gives flavour, not pectin, as the reason for the three-quarters currant proportion, and it allows equal quantities of the two as an alternative.
- Extracting the juiceCrush the fruit, heat it gently until the juice runs freely, then drain through a jelly bag without squeezing. Squeezing forces pulp through and clouds the jelly. The double boiler or "waterless cooker" is simply insurance against scorching.
- Second and third extractionsAfter the first draining, the pulp is returned to the pan with a little water, reheated and drained again. The second run is weaker in pectin, sugar and flavour, hence the reduced three-quarters cup of sugar per cup of juice. Expect a softer set and consider it a separate batch rather than blending it with the first.
- Twenty minutes is a maximum, not a ruleTwenty minutes is a guide rather than a fixed rule -- Boiling the juice before adding sugar concentrates it, but prolonged boiling degrades pectin. Work in batches of no more than 4 to 6 cups of juice in a wide pan and stop as soon as the volume has visibly reduced; a small quantity will need less time.
- Heating the sugarWarming the sugar in a low oven, as the recipe directs, keeps the boil from stalling when it goes in. It is still a sound trick, though not essential with a heavy pan and modern burners.
- Filling and keepingThe recipe gives no instructions for sealing or storage. Current practice is to ladle the jelly into hot sterilised half-pint jars, leave a quarter inch of headspace, and process in a boiling water bath for 5 to 10 minutes depending on altitude.
- YieldFour cups of juice with four cups of sugar gives roughly four to five half-pint jars.
Currant jelly was the backbone of the American preserving cupboard well into the twentieth century, valued less as a novelty than as a reliable one, since red currants carry enough pectin and acid to set without help from anything else. That reliability is why books of this era teach the currant first and then treat everything low in pectin, raspberries among them, as something to be carried by a currant base. The habit of taking two or three extractions from the same pulp belongs to a household economy in which a bush's worth of fruit was expected to yield every last usable drop, with the weaker later runs sweetened less and often set aside for cooking rather than the table. Red currants have since largely disappeared from American markets, in part because of the federal and state bans imposed in the early twentieth century on Ribes plantings as hosts of white pine blister rust; the restrictions have been relaxed in many states, but the fruit never regained its place.