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Cherry, Peach, Pear or Pineapple Jelly
3 erps (1½ lbs.) Juice 64 level cups (24 lbs.) Sugar 1 bottle (scant cup) CERTO Berries: Juice is pressed from raw fruit. Thoroughly crush with masher about 2½ qts. berries. Proceed as on page 12.
Cherry: Stem and crush well about 3 lbs. ripe sour cherries. Remove and crush 2 heaping tablespoons of pits and add to cherries. Add 1/2 cup water, stir until boiling, cover pan, and simmer 10 minutes. Proceed as on page 12.
Peach or Pear: Use about 3½ lbs. ripe fruit. Do not peel. Remove pits from peaches. Crush thoroughly and add ½ cup water. Stir until boiling, cover pan, and simmer 5 minutes. Proceed as on page 12.
Pineapple: Put ripe fruit through food chopper, or chop fine by hand, and to 4 cups chopped fruit add 1/4 cup water. Stir until boiling, cover pan and simmer 5 minutes. Proceed as on page 12.
This is a liquid-pectin jelly formula from the Certo era, written as a single sugar-and-pectin ratio with four fruit preparations hung off it. The proportions still work, but two things in it — the crushed cherry pits and the assumed sealing method — belong to the 1920s and not to a present-day kitchen.
- The cherry pits are the problemCherry kernels contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is crushed and wetted. Two heaping tablespoons of deliberately crushed pits simmered into the fruit is exactly the extraction step you would use if you wanted that compound in the juice; ten minutes of covered simmering drives off only part of it. Bitter-almond and noyau flavourings were once handled this way as a matter of course and are not handled that way now.
- The other fruitsBerry, peach, pear and pineapple as written carry no chemical hazard — the peach instruction correctly says to remove the pits rather than crush them. What they do carry is a sealing method the book takes for granted, and that has changed.
- SealingJelly booklets of this period commonly finished glasses with a layer of melted paraffin, though the sealing step here falls on the page not reproduced. Paraffin seals are no longer considered sound; mould can grow beneath them and the seal fails as the wax shrinks. Current practice is a two-piece lid and a measured boiling-water process. Use a present-day tested jelly recipe rather than adapting this one.
- The missing methodEvery variation ends "Proceed as on page 12," which is not reproduced here. That page would have carried the actual jelly-making step — presumably juice and sugar brought to a boil, pectin stirred in, a timed boil, then skimming — so the text on its own is not self-contained.
- The ratioThe quantities at the head apply to each 3 cups of strained juice, not to the raw fruit weights below. Liquid pectin and powdered pectin are not interchangeable: powdered pectin goes in with the fruit or juice before the sugar, liquid pectin after.
- Fruit weightsRoughly 3 lb of stemmed sour cherries, 3½ lb of unpeeled peaches or pears, or 4 cups of chopped pineapple were each expected to yield about 3 cups of juice. Yields vary with ripeness; measure the strained juice and scale the sugar and pectin to it rather than trusting the weights.
- StrainingJuice for a clear jelly should drip through a damp jelly bag unsqueezed. Pressing the bag forces pulp through and gives a cloudier set.
- YieldThree cups of juice with this much sugar makes roughly eight to ten eight-ounce jars.
Certo was the first widely sold liquid fruit pectin in the English-speaking world, marketed in the years after the First World War, and the small recipe booklets that came with the bottle did as much to change home preserving as the product itself. Before commercial pectin, a jelly maker depended on the fruit's own setting power, which meant tart, slightly underripe fruit, long boiling, and a good deal of guesswork with the sheeting test. Bottled pectin made it easier to set ripe, sweet, low-pectin fruit — peaches, pears, pineapple, sweet cherries — in a boil of a minute or two, which may be part of why the booklets are organised as one fixed sugar-and-pectin ratio with a page of fruit preparations attached. The crushed cherry pits are a survival of an older flavouring habit: kernels of cherries, peaches and apricots were long used, as bitter almonds were, to give preserves and confectionery the scent generally called noyau.