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Raspberry Jelly
Pick the stalks from some perfectly ripe and freshly-gathered raspberries, and put them into a stone jar. Bruise them slightly, cover the jar, place it in a pan of boiling water, and keep it boiling gently until the juice flows freely. Lay a piece of muslin in a fine hair sieve, and keep pouring off the juice till no more will flow. The fruit must not be squeezed, and if the juice is at all thick it should be strained through a jelly bag. Measure the juice, and put it into a preserving-pan with a pound of loaf sugar (in lumps) to each pint of juice. Stir occasionally, skim carefully, and boil gently until it sets when a little is poured upon a plate. Put the jelly into small jars, and when cold cover in the usual way. Store in a dry, airy place. The flavour of this jelly will be improved if one part of red currant juice is used with two parts of raspberry-juice. If the fruit is not drained quite dry, it may be boiled with half its weight of sugar to make common jam. Time, about one hour to draw the juice; a few minutes to boil it with the sugar. Probable cost, 9d. to 1s. per pound. Sufficient, two quarts of raspberries should yield about one pint of juice.
A clear-juice jelly of the old school: no added pectin, no thermometer, and a set that depends entirely on the fruit and on judging the boil. Two things decide whether it works — that you never squeeze the fruit, and that you recognise setting point.
- Do not squeeze the pulpThis is the hinge of the recipe. Pressing the fruit or wringing the bag forces through fine solids that turn the jelly cloudy and no amount of later skimming fixes it. Let it drip, however slowly, and use the drained pulp for the "common jam" the recipe mentions at the end.
- The stone jar in boiling waterThis is a bain-marie, used because direct heat scorches fruit in a thin pan. A heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water, or a covered ovenproof dish in a low oven, does the same job. Reckon on the stated hour before the juice runs freely.
- Loaf sugarLoaf or lump sugar was simply refined cane sugar broken from a cone, valued because it was cleaner than the grocer's brown sugars and threw less scum. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct equivalent, weight for weight: 1 lb (about 450 g) to each pint (20 fl oz, roughly 570 ml) of juice.
- Why the redcurrant juice mattersRaspberries are low in pectin, which is exactly why the recipe recommends one part redcurrant juice to two of raspberry. Redcurrants are among the most pectin-rich fruits in the garden. Without them, expect a soft set or a long boil that dulls the flavour.
- "A few minutes" is optimisticWith a well-set redcurrant blend it can be quick, but straight raspberry juice may well need longer than the recipe suggests. Judge it by the cold-plate test as written, or by temperature: setting point is around 220F (104.5C) at sea level.
- SkimmingMany preservers skim only near the end, and with a wide flat spoon, on the grounds that skimming throughout wastes jelly. The recipe as written simply says to skim carefully.
- "Cover in the usual way"In this period that typically meant a disc of brandied paper laid on the hot surface and a tied-down paper cover. Current practice is hot, sterilised jars with two-piece lids, filled to within a quarter inch of the rim and given a short water-bath; store opened jars in the refrigerator.
- YieldThe book's own figures hold: 2 quarts of raspberries give about 1 pint of juice, which with its pound of sugar makes roughly 1 1/2 lb of finished jelly — two or three small jars.
Cassell's belongs to the great late-Victorian age of the domestic preserving pan, when a household with a garden or access to a market glut expected to put up its own year's supply of jelly, and when the cost of sugar had fallen far enough to make it possible for ordinary families — the "probable cost, 9d. to 1s. per pound" is the sort of figure a careful housekeeper was expected to weigh against the shop price. The technique here predates the commercial trade in bottled pectin, which did not arrive until the early 1900s; cooks worked instead from accumulated knowledge of which fruits set and which did not, and the instruction to blend redcurrant with raspberry is that knowledge in practical form. The insistence on unsqueezed juice and a hair sieve lined with muslin reflects a period standard in which a jelly was judged first on clarity and only second on flavour.