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Jellied Tomato Ketchup
1 cup (½ pint) Ketchup 3 level cups Sugar ½ bottle (scant 1/2 cup) CERTO 1½ Cup) CERTO Heat the sugar and Ketchup to a full boil, remove from fire and stir in CERTO.
CERTO FRESH FRUIT JELLIES CERTO
A two-ingredient condiment jelly from a pectin-company pamphlet, meant to be spooned beside cold meat rather than spread on toast. The proportions are a standard jelly formula with ketchup standing in for fruit juice.
- The garbled line"1½ Cup) CERTO" appears to be a duplication introduced in transcription. The recipe calls for one measure of pectin only: a scant ½ cup.
- What Certo isLiquid pectin, still sold under the same name. Commercial liquid pectin is extracted from fruit, historically apple pomace and now often citrus peel. It is not interchangeable with powdered pectin, which is added to the fruit before the sugar rather than after the boil.
- Bottle sizes have changedThe original 8 fl oz bottle made a half-bottle a scant ½ cup. Modern Certo comes as two 3 fl oz pouches in a box, so a scant ½ cup is roughly one and a quarter pouches. Measure by volume, not by package.
- The hinge: a full rolling boilThe sugar and ketchup must reach a boil that cannot be stirred down before the pectin goes in. Short of that the mixture has not reached the concentration and temperature the pectin needs, and the jelly stays a thick sauce.
- After the pectinThe pamphlet stops at "stir in CERTO," which is period shorthand. Stir hard for a minute off the heat to distribute the pectin, skim the foam, and pour at once — this mixture begins to set quickly.
- Sugar is structuralThree cups to one of ketchup looks extreme, but pectin will not gel without that sugar concentration. Cutting it produces syrup. Ketchup supplies the acid the pectin also needs, so no lemon juice is called for.
- SealingOriginal practice was to pour into glasses and cover with melted paraffin. Paraffin sealing is no longer recommended. Either process filled half-pint jars in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes or treat it as a refrigerator jelly and use it within a month.
- YieldRoughly 3 cups, about three half-pint jars. Serve in small quantities with ham, cold roast beef, or a cheese board.
Certo was one of the first commercially standardized liquid pectins, generally traced to the Douglas Pectin Corporation and later sold under General Foods; the little recipe pamphlets that came with the bottle were one of the main ways home cooks learned to use it. Before packaged pectin, a jelly-maker relied on the natural pectin in underripe apples, currants or quinces, so low-pectin fruits like tomatoes and peaches had to be combined with a high-pectin fruit or juice to set at all. Booklets like this one made a point of showing off that new freedom, and a jelly built on bottled ketchup — already a factory product, already sweet and acidic — is about as pure a demonstration of the idea as exists. It belongs to the same early twentieth-century American taste for sweet jellied relishes served with cold meats, alongside mint jelly and spiced crabapple.