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Variations of Plain Apple Jelly
Just before turning the jelly into the glasses, add one or two teaspoonfuls of vanilla extract.
When setting the apple juice to boil, add a lemon or an orange cut in very thin slices, first removing all seeds; skim out the lemon or orange before adding the sugar. Or boil the thin yellow rind and the juice of one or two lemons in each two quarts of juice prepared for jelly.
Just before turning the jelly into the glasses, hold in it for a few moments three or four lemon verbena or rose geranium leaves.
Or stir into it a teaspoonful of almond extract.
These are flavour variations to be layered onto a batch of plain apple jelly, so they assume you already have juice strained from cooked apples and a proven set. A few of the directions depend on habits — paraffin-sealed tumblers, extract by the teaspoonful into a full kettle — that need translating.
- The hinge: add flavour off the heatThe hinge: add flavour late -- Vanilla and almond extract are alcohol-based and volatile; boiling them drives the aroma off. The recipe puts them in "just before turning the jelly into the glasses"; taking the kettle from the burner first and pouring at once is the safest reading.
- Scale of the batchThe only quantity given is "each two quarts of juice," and that appears only in the boiled lemon-rind variation. The extract quantities are given without reference to any batch size, so for a small batch start at the lower end or the jelly will taste of the bottle.
- "Glasses" means jarsPeriod jelly glasses were straight-sided tumblers, commonly sealed with melted paraffin, though this recipe does not say so. Use half-pint canning jars with two-piece lids and process 5 minutes in a boiling water bath; paraffin seals are no longer considered reliable, as they crack and admit mould.
- Judging the setNo timing is given because none can be. Apple juice sets at 220F at sea level, or about 8F above the boiling point of water where you are; a candy thermometer or the sheeting test off a cold spoon is more reliable than the clock.
- Pectin comes from the applesWith no added pectin, the set depends on tart, slightly underripe apples cooked with their skins and cores. Fully ripe dessert apples are lower in pectin and acid and tend to give a soft, syrupy set.
- Citrus rind, not pith"Thin yellow rind" means zest pared with a peeler and no white pith, which turns the jelly bitter over a long boil. Skim the sliced fruit out before the sugar goes in, as the recipe insists — left in, it will cloud the jelly.
- Scented leavesRose geranium (Pelargonium graveolens) and lemon verbena leaves are steeped for a few moments only and then lifted out. Buy them from a herb grower or grow your own — the bedding plants sold as "geraniums" are other Pelargonium species and are not scented-leaved.
- Almond extractModern almond extract is either benzaldehyde or made from bitter almond oil with the prussic acid removed. A teaspoon in a full batch is assertive; start with half if you are unsure.
Plain apple jelly was the workhorse of the American preserving closet, valued less for its own flavour than for being a clear, firm, cheap medium that would take on anything else. Apples and crabapples are unusually rich in natural pectin and acid, so a cook could count on a set at a time when commercial pectin was only beginning to appear on grocers' shelves in the 1910s; scented jellies of this kind therefore turn up in household manuals decades before any packet product. The rose geranium and lemon verbena leaves point to a period when scented-leaf pelargoniums were common parlour and window plants, valued for fragrance rather than flower, and a handful of leaves cost nothing. Steeping them briefly in hot jelly is a technique often traced to English kitchen practice, where the same leaves flavoured cakes and custards, and it survives in Southern American cookbooks as apple-and-rose-geranium jelly served with hot bread or lamb.