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Gooseberry Jelly
Choose ripe, and perfectly sound gooseberries, gathered on a dry day. Pick them, put them into a preserving-pan, and simmer them gently until they yield their juice readily. Strain them through a sieve, and afterwards through a jelly-bag, but on no account squeeze the fruit. If left moist the gooseberries may, with the addition of some sugar and a few red currants, be made into jam, for puddings, etc. Weigh the juice, boil it quickly for a quarter of an hour, then pour into jars, and cover securely. It is a great improvement to add a pound of red or white currant juice to every three pounds of gooseberry juice.
A straightforward strained-juice jelly, but the text has one significant gap: it tells you to weigh the juice and never says what to do with the weight. Read the points below before starting.
- The missing sugarThe recipe tells you to weigh the juice and then never says why. Contemporary jelly recipes generally worked to roughly a pound of sugar to a pound of juice. Without sugar this will not set, will not keep, and will reduce to a thin sour syrup. If you want to follow the book, work to equal weights of juice and sugar.
- Judge the set, not the clockA quarter of an hour is a rough average for a large preserving-pan. Test instead: 220F on a sugar thermometer, or a spoonful chilled on a cold saucer that wrinkles when pushed. Depth of pan and ripeness of fruit change the timing by several minutes either way.
- Do not squeeze the bagThe recipe is explicit: "on no account squeeze the fruit." Pressing the pulp forces fine solids through and gives a cloudy jelly that no amount of boiling will clear. Let it drip, however long it takes.
- Ripe versus underripe fruitFully ripe gooseberries are sweeter but lower in pectin and acid. Green or just-turning fruit sets more reliably, and redcurrants are themselves high in pectin and acid, which may well be why the currant juice is called a great improvement rather than merely a flavouring.
- Preserving-panA wide, heavy pan, originally brass or copper, holding several times the volume of the juice. Any wide stainless or enamelled pan works; width matters more than material, since evaporation is what concentrates the jelly. Do not use aluminium or bare iron with this much acid.
- Jars and covering"cover securely" would typically have meant a waxed disc with a tied cloth or paper top, the jars kept cool and dark. For a jelly you intend to store at room temperature, follow current practice: sterilised jars, filled hot, properly sealed.
- The second use of the pulpThe moist strained fruit really does make a serviceable jam; it still has flesh and skin, only some juice gone. The recipe gives no proportions, only "some sugar and a few red currants" -- sweeten to taste and cook it down. Expect it to be coarse; it is pudding jam, not preserve for the table.
- YieldThe original gives none. Roughly 4 lb of gooseberries yields around 2 pints of juice, which with equal sugar makes about five half-pint jars.
Gooseberries were one of the great British garden fruits of the nineteenth century, which is why a book like Cassell's can devote separate entries to gooseberry jelly, jam, fool, tart and vinegar without apology. Competitive gooseberry growing was a serious northern English pastime " the Lancashire and Cheshire gooseberry clubs weighed prize berries to the grain, and a handful of such shows survive today. The fruit's usefulness in the still-room came from its acidity and its pectin: a gooseberry picked slightly green sets a jelly almost by itself, at a time when commercial pectin did not exist and cooks relied on knowing which fruits would jell and which needed help. The recommendation to blend in currant juice is that knowledge in practical form, adding acid to a jelly that on its own can be dull.