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Currant Jelly, White
This jelly may be made in the same way as the last, or the fruit may be bruised and the juice strained through a jelly-bag. It must not be pressed, or the jelly will not be clear. The fruit which is left in the bag may be boiled into nursery preserve. Allow one pound of sugar to every pint of juice. Put both into a preserving-pan, stir the liquid until it boils, and boil for six minutes. When pounded sugar is used for jellies it should be prepared at home. That which is bought at the shops may be adulterated, and then the colour of the jelly would be spoilt. If it is wished to have the jelly very stiff, half an ounce of isinglass may be used for every pint of juice. It should be dissolved in a little of the juice and put in with the sugar. Three pints of currants will probably yield one pint of juice. Probable cost of currants, 6d. per quart.
A clear jelly from white currants, worked at Victorian sugar ratios and Victorian pint measures. Most of the recipe stands; the set, the sugar and the isinglass need translating.
- Do not press the bagThis is the hinge of the whole recipe. Squeezing the jelly bag forces pulp and cloud through the cloth and no amount of later boiling will clear it. Hang it and let it drip for several hours or overnight, and resist touching it.
- Imperial measuresThe pint here is the imperial 20 fl oz, not the US 16. One pound of sugar to 20 fl oz of juice is roughly 450 g to 570 ml — a slightly lower sugar ratio than the same pound to a 16 fl oz pint would give.
- Six minutes is a guide, not a ruleBoiling time depends on the pectin and acid in your fruit and the width of your pan. Test for set at 220F/105C on a sugar thermometer, or with the cold-saucer wrinkle test, rather than trusting the clock. White currants are reasonably high in pectin, so a short boil is plausible, but check.
- Pounded sugarSugar crushed fine at home, roughly what we would call caster or superfine. Buy caster sugar; the adulteration warning belongs to a period before food-purity enforcement and has no force now.
- IsinglassA gelatin obtained from the swim bladders of fish, once sold in leaves or shreds for jellies and for fining beer. It is still available from brewing suppliers but is not worth hunting down here: a jelly stiffened with it is a different thing from a plain sugar-set preserve and is safer treated as a refrigerator jelly than a shelf-stable one. A properly set fruit jelly needs no help.
- Preserving-panA wide, heavy, unlined copper or brass pan. Any wide heavy-based stainless pan works; width matters more than material, because evaporation is what concentrates the sugar. Avoid untreated aluminium with acidic fruit.
- Nursery preserveThe rough, cloudy jam made from the pulp left in the bag — nursery in the sense of children's food, the plain second-grade preserve that did not go to the dining table. Cook the pulp down with sugar and use it within a few weeks.
- Yield and storageThree pints of currants to one pint of juice is about right; expect roughly two to three half-pint jars from that quantity. The recipe assumes you know to pot it hot into clean sterilised jars and seal at once — follow current guidance for processing and headspace if you want it shelf-stable rather than refrigerated.
White currants are not a separate species but a pale-fruited variety of the redcurrant, Ribes rubrum, grown in British kitchen gardens alongside their red and black cousins and valued for a slightly sweeter, less strident flavour and, above all, for the pale straw-coloured jelly they yield. That colour may well be why the entry appears separately in Cassell's: red currant jelly was a staple with mutton and game, but a colourless jelly could be used where a red one would stain a dish, and it made a genteel glaze for pale fruit tarts. The instruction to pound one's own sugar rather than buy it is a period reflex; adulteration of groceries with cheaper fillers was a live public scandal in Britain through the mid-nineteenth century, and though the Adulteration of Food Acts of the 1860s and 1870s brought it under control, cookery writers went on warning against shop-bought powders for a good while after. The costing in pence per quart is typical of Cassell's, which was written for households keeping accounts.