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Peach Jelly
Wash and slice but do not pare the fruit, using part unripe and part ripe fruit (the latter firm). Place in earthenware crock and set in moderate oven or on the back of the stove with neither sugar nor water, watching carefully. Or the fruit may be set inside a second vessel containing hot water and let stand far back on the stove for twenty-four hours. The juice should by this be free and thick. Strain over night in cheese-cloth bag. Measure and use pound for pint of sugar and juice, heating separately before cooking together. When this juice has cooked down a little-skimming meanwhile-add sugar gradually and let boil up. If carefully made this will result in excellent jelly.
A juice-extraction method rather than a conventional jam: the peaches are cooked dry until they release their own liquid, then the strained juice is boiled with sugar. The mix of ripe and unripe fruit is the whole point, and skipping it is the usual reason peach jelly fails.
- Why underripe fruitPeaches are low in both pectin and acid, and fully ripe fruit sets poorly. The unripe fruit supplies the pectin and acidity; the recipe gives no proportions, so use a good share of unripe fruit alongside the firmest ripe fruit you have.
- Pound for pintThis is the standard jelly ratio: 1 lb sugar (about 2 1/4 cups) to each pint (2 cups) of strained juice. Warming the sugar and the juice separately before combining simply keeps the boil from stalling.
- Oven and stove temperaturesA "moderate oven" in books of this period is usually reckoned at about 325-350F, though for drawing juice a lower, slower heat suits better. The twenty-four-hour version is a water-bath method: the outer vessel must stay genuinely hot, not lukewarm, or the juice may begin to ferment before it is strained.
- VesselsAn earthenware crock can be replaced with any deep ovenproof dish; the "second vessel containing hot water" is a bain-marie. Use stainless steel or enamel for the boiling stage, never bare aluminum or iron, which discolor fruit juice.
- StonesRemove the pits before cooking. Peach kernels contain amygdalin; some preservers did add a few deliberately for their almond flavour, but they are best left out.
- StrainingHang the cheesecloth bag and let it drip overnight without squeezing. Pressing the pulp forces through fine solids and gives cloudy jelly.
- Judging the setThe original offers no test. Boil to 220F on a thermometer, or until the syrup sheets off a cold spoon in two joined drops rather than running off freely. Boiling time after the sugar goes in varies with the juice.
- Yield and keepingYields vary with the fruit; a pint of juice with its pound of sugar will fill something like two to three half-pint jars. The recipe predates modern sealing practice: refrigerate the filled jars and use within a few weeks, or process them in a boiling-water bath by current instructions for shelf storage.
Peach jelly sits awkwardly in the preserving repertoire, and this recipe shows why: cooks had to compensate for a fruit that resists setting. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American housekeeping books often advise blending green and ripe fruit for exactly this reason, a practical grasp of pectin chemistry that predates the commercial pectin extracts that came into household use in the 1910s and 1920s. The dry-extraction technique — with long gentle heat in a crock at the back of the range or in a slow oven, no added water — belongs to the era of the coal or wood stove, where a steady low corner of heat was always available and a twenty-four-hour operation cost nothing extra in fuel. Leaving the skins on was deliberate too: peach skin carries color and a good deal of the fruit's aroma, which pass into the juice as it is drawn out.