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Black Currant Jelly
Black Currant Jelly may be made as above with the exception of adding a little water to the fruit when first put on, otherwise the syrup would be too thick.
RED CURRANT JELLY No. 2 (Without Cooking) Crush currants without stemming and squeeze through a coarse cloth. Weigh, instead of measuring juice, and allow a pound of sugar for each pound of juice. Stir together with the hand till sugar is smoothly dissolved. Place in glasses and let stand in window where hot sunlight may shine on them through glass for at least five days. Cover and keep in cool, dry place.
BAR-LE-DUC (Imitation of the Imported Jam or Jelly) 1. Add one-fifth part of currants (by weight) to red raspberries. Crush and strain currants and weigh again, this time with the raspberries, fruit separated by paper. Add three-quarters pound of sugar for each pound of the second weighing of fruit and juice and simmer, then boilskimming-for twenty-five minutes, when add the raspberries (uncrushed) and boil until the juice jells (in about fifteen minutes), then remove and seal well while hot. 2. Boil together five minutes two-thirds measure of sugar (as two pints) to one of cold water.
Measure the syrup resulting and when again boiling add to it equal measure of strained red or white currant juice. When this jells add seeded garden currants which have been carefully opened with fine sharp wooden blade or a quill. If the measure of syrup is one pint add one pint currants; if a quart, then a quart of currants and so on. Let boil up once when remove; pour into jars and set (uncovered) in a dark, dry, and cool place for five or six days, then seal. The currant juice is sometimes omitted, only the sugar syrup and fruit used. The currants, if red, should be pale in colour.
Three separate methods are packed into this passage, and two of them depend on preserving practices that have since been abandoned. The vocabulary and the ratios are still worth reading closely.
- Why the sun jelly failsRed Currant Jelly No. 2 is never heated at all: raw juice and sugar are stirred by hand and left in glasses in a window for five days, covered only afterwards. Nothing kills the yeasts and moulds carried in on unstemmed fruit, and sunlight through window glass does not raise the mixture to a temperature that would. Surface mould on a sugar preserve can carry mycotoxins into the layer beneath, so scraping it off is not a remedy.
- Why the Bar-le-Duc keeps fails tooBoth versions finish with open-kettle sealing — poured hot and sealed, or in the second method left uncovered in a dark room for five or six days and then sealed. Neither gives the jars any heat treatment after filling, and the second deliberately exposes the surface to airborne spoilage before closing it. Use a current tested recipe if you want jars that will keep on a shelf.
- Weighing juice, not measuring itThe instruction to weigh rather than measure is sound practice: currant juice varies in density with ripeness, and a pound of juice to a pound of sugar is a far more repeatable ratio than a cup to a cup. A pint of currant juice weighs a little over a pound.
- Why black currants need waterBlack currants are drier, thicker-skinned and much higher in pectin than red, so their juice sets almost too firmly. The "little water" in the opening line is there to keep the finished jelly from turning stiff and gummy rather than tender.
- "Fruit separated by paper"This appears to mean the raspberries are weighed alongside the currant juice on the same scale but kept apart with a sheet of paper, so the cook can arrive at a combined weight without mixing the two fruits — the raspberries do go in whole and late.
- Garden currants and the quill"Seeded garden currants" are ordinary cultivated Ribes, opened one by one with a sharpened quill or thin wooden blade to lift the seeds out while leaving the skin intact. It is the defining labour of Bar-le-Duc and it is genuinely slow work; the recipe adds only that red currants used this way should be pale in colour, without giving a reason.
- Sugar proportionsThree-quarters of a pound of sugar per pound of fruit and juice is low by preserving standards and relies entirely on currant pectin for the set. The second Bar-le-Duc method inverts the logic, building a two-thirds sugar to one water syrup first and adding fruit only at the end so the berries stay whole.
Bar-le-Duc, in Lorraine, is traditionally said to have been known for seeded currant preserve since the fourteenth century, and the town's confiture " each berry pricked with a goose quill so the seeds come out and the skin does not " is often said to have been sent as a diplomatic and royal gift. By the time American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries appeared, imported jars of it were an expensive delicacy, which is exactly why this book offers two "imitations" rather than the thing itself: the flavour was reachable at home, but the imported name was not. The sun-cooked jelly beside it belongs to an older domestic tradition of setting fruit and sugar in a window rather than over a fire, valued because uncooked juice keeps a brighter colour and a fresher taste " a real advantage, obtained at a risk of spoilage that home preservers no longer accept.