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Kumquat Jelly
In proportion to one dozen kumquats, cut in small pieces, use one half-pint cold water. Simmer down to onefourth pint of juice then strain. Re-heat and add a very • scant half pint of sugar. (See also other citrus jellies.)
A miniature, proportion-based recipe rather than a batch formula — it tells you the ratio and expects you to scale it. A dozen kumquats yields only a few tablespoons of finished jelly, so most cooks will multiply by six or eight.
- The proportions in cupsA half-pint is one cup, a quarter-pint is a half cup. So: 12 kumquats plus 1 cup water, simmered until 1/2 cup of liquid remains, then a scant 1 cup sugar. Note that the sugar is measured by volume, not weight — a scant cup is about 6 1/2 oz.
- Whether the pint is American or ImperialIf the book is American, read these as 16 fl oz pints; an Imperial pint is 20 fl oz. Either way the sugar-to-juice ratio stays the same, since both measures scale together.
- Do not discard the seedsKumquat seeds and membranes are rich in pectin. Cut the fruit up seeds and all, simmer everything, and only strain at the end; leaving them out makes a good set less likely.
- "Simmer down" means uncoveredYou are reducing by half, which takes roughly 20-30 minutes at a bare simmer with the lid off. Cover the pan and nothing evaporates.
- Strain, do not pressLet the pulp drain through a jelly bag or a doubled square of muslin under its own weight. Squeezing forces fine solids through and gives cloudy jelly, which is the one fault this recipe has no way to correct.
- Know when it is doneThe recipe gives no second timing. After the sugar dissolves, boil hard and take it to 220F/105C on a thermometer, or until a spoonful wrinkles on a chilled saucer. At this volume it happens fast — start testing at five minutes.
- YieldA single batch as written makes about one small jar. Scale up before you start, but keep the pan wide and shallow so the reduction still happens quickly.
- StorageWith no processing instructions given, treat this as a refrigerator jelly: pot it hot into a clean jar, cool, and keep it chilled for a few weeks. For shelf storage use current water-bath canning times for citrus jelly.
Kumquats reached American gardens through the nineteenth-century Asian plant trade, and by the time books of this sort were compiled they were a familiar dooryard fruit in Florida and along the Gulf Coast. The recipe sits filed under "The Orange" rather than in a chapter of its own. The fruit is unusual in that the peel is sweet and the flesh sour, so it is used whole; the botanist Robert Fortune, who sent specimens to England in the 1840s, is the source of the old genus name Fortunella, though the plant is generally grouped with the true citrus now. The recipe's shape tells you as much as its contents: a proportion for a dozen fruit, a cross-reference to the other citrus jellies, and nothing more. A small ornamental crop off one tree was exactly the kind of thing these single-paragraph entries existed to use up.