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Grape Fruit Jelly
Proceed as for marmalade until fruit is soft and translucent, then strain off the juice; heat it again to boiling point; boil down for five minutes or until thick, then add hot sugar, a pint and a half to each pint of juice. This should jell within ten minutes.
GRAPE FRUIT JELLY No. 2 Soak rind over night in brine. In morning place in fresh water, replacing until all bitterness is removed. Slice the fruit-pulp, after cutting off with sharp knife the white tissue, and place with rind in jelly kettle. In proportion to one grape-fruit use one quart of cold water and cook down to one-third pint of juice. Strain and add sugar in proportion of a little more than measure for measure.
GRAPE FRUIT DROPS (A Confection) Make as for Jelly No. 2, using fruit not yet matured and when strained adding to the juice twice as much sugar. Stir until it begins to grain, when drop on sheets of buttered paper. This may be kept in jars for flavouring or for grape-fruitade.
Three related preparations built on the same principle: grapefruit peel and pith are extraordinarily rich in pectin, so no commercial pectin is needed, but they are also bitter, which is why the rind is soaked before cooking. The instructions assume you have already read the marmalade method earlier in the book.
- "Grape fruit" is grapefruitThe two-word spelling was common in print into the early twentieth century. One average modern grapefruit weighs about 1 lb; fruit of the period was often smaller and seedier, so juice and pectin yields from a modern seedless variety may not match the recipe's proportions exactly.
- Pints of sugar are volume, not weightA pint of granulated sugar is 2 cups, about 14 oz. So "a pint and a half to each pint of juice" in No. 1 is roughly 21 oz sugar to 16 fl oz juice — a very sweet jelly by current taste, and the high sugar proportion would help it set quickly. No. 2's "a little more than measure for measure" is closer to modern proportions.
- The brine is unspecifiedNo strength or quantity is given for the overnight soak, and the original offers no guide. Expect to change the fresh water several times the next morning and to taste the rind as you go — bitterness, not the clock, is the endpoint.
- Cut away the white tissueThis is the hinge of No. 2. The albedo carries naringin, a principal bitter compound in grapefruit. Removing it from the pulp while keeping the outer rind gives pectin with less of the bitterness.
- "Hot sugar" and the ten minutesWarming the sugar in a low oven before adding it keeps the boil from stalling. Rather than trusting the ten minutes, take the jelly to 220F at sea level, or test a spoonful on a chilled plate — it should wrinkle when pushed.
- The confection is a grained sugar dropFor the drops, the mixture is boiled well past jelly stage until it clouds and begins to crystallize at the edge of the spoon; around 240-250F it will grain as described. Once graining starts it moves quickly, so have the buttered paper ready.
- Unripe fruit for the drops"Fruit not yet matured" is called for presumably because underripe citrus tends to be higher in pectin and acid than fully ripe fruit, which helps the sugar set firm.
- Sealing and yieldThe book gives no processing directions. Follow current practice: fill sterilized half-pint jars and process in a boiling-water bath. One grapefruit reduced to a third of a pint of juice yields only a small jar, so scale up if you want more than a taste.
Grapefruit was a latecomer to the American table. The fruit is generally traced to an eighteenth-century Barbados cross involving the sweet orange and the pomelo, and it reached Florida in the early nineteenth century, but it was grown chiefly as a curiosity until refrigerated rail transport made a national market possible. By the 1890s and 1900s halved grapefruit had become a fashionable breakfast course in hotels and boarding houses. Preserving the peel answered a practical problem: the peel and pith are among the most pectin-rich material in a household kitchen, at a period when jelly-making depended entirely on the fruit's own setting power. The final line or flavouring or for grape-fruitade — is characteristic of the thrift running through these books, where nothing citrus was thrown out if it could be made to sweeten a drink.