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Plum Jelly
Take four pounds of sound, ripe, red plums. Boil them in four quarts of water until the liquid is reduced to three pints. Strain through a jelly-bag, and with each pint of juice put a pound of sugar. Boil the syrup until it jellies. Pour into small jars, and cover in the usual way. Or, put the plums into a deep earthen jar, cover it closely, and set it in a pan of boiling water, which must be kept boiling until the plums yield their juice readily. Pour the juice from them, strain, and measure it; then boil it quickly for twenty-five minutes. Put with it three pounds of sugar for every four pints of juice, and boil it until it will stiffen. In either of the above cases the plums from which the juice has been strained may be sweetened and used for common pies; or they may be made into plum paste for dessert.
Two methods for the same jelly: an open boil with water, and a steam extraction that draws juice from the fruit without diluting it. Both hinge on hitting a proper set, which the original leaves to the eye.
- The set point"Boil until it jellies" means 220F/105C at sea level, or roughly 8F above the boiling point of water where you are. Use a thermometer and confirm with a cold-plate test: a spoonful on a chilled saucer should wrinkle when pushed after a minute.
- Choose the fruit for pectinUse plums that are ripe but firm, with a proportion of slightly underripe fruit, and leave the stones and skins in during extraction. Red plums, damsons and bullaces set readily; fully soft dessert plums may not set at all without added pectin or lemon juice.
- The reduction is drasticFour quarts of water down to three pints from 4 lb of fruit is a long, hard boil in a wide pan. The second method avoids dilution: a covered earthenware or heatproof glass jar set in simmering water draws the juice out undiluted, though the recipe still calls for boiling that juice for twenty-five minutes afterwards.
- Sugar ratios differ between the two methodsThe first gives 1 lb sugar per pint of juice, i.e. 4 lb per 4 pints; the second gives 3 lb per 4 pints, three-quarters as much. Note that the recipe measures the juice before the twenty-five minute boil, so that boil concentrates it further. If your juice is thin, use the higher ratio.
- Do not squeeze the bagLet the juice drip through the jelly bag unaided, however slowly. Pressing forces pulp through and the jelly goes cloudy. Skim foam off the finished jelly before potting for the same reason.
- "Cover in the usual way" is obsoleteAt the time that meant a paraffin-wax seal or a brandied paper disc. Current practice is hot jelly into hot sterilised jars, two-piece lids, and a 5-10 minute boiling-water bath; wax seals are no longer considered reliable against mould.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Three pints of juice with a pound of sugar per pint will fill a good number of small jars; measure as you pot rather than relying on a fixed figure.
- The leftover pulpThe suggestion is sound, but sieve the cooked plums first to remove skins and stones. Sweetened, the purée makes pie filling; cooked down thick and dried in a very low oven (170-200F) it becomes the "plum paste" mentioned, essentially fruit cheese.
Jelly-making of this kind belongs to the era before commercial pectin, when the cook relied entirely on the fruit's own setting power — which is why the recipe specifies sound, ripe plums. It demonstrates a general technique: extract, strain, measure, sweeten by proportion, boil to set. The second method, standing a closed earthen jar in a pan of boiling water, is the older domestic way of drawing juice without scorching or dilution, and works on much the same principle as the modern steam juicer. The thrifty closing note is characteristic of late-Victorian household writing, where the spent pulp from a clear jelly could be redirected into "common pies" for the family table.