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Ripe and Green Grape Jellies
For the darker, sweeter jelly take ripe, dark grapes; for lighter, tart, jelly grapes still green should be used. The tartness and colour may be varied by using part of each. Allow one and one-eighth pounds of sugar for each pint of juice of ripe grapes and pound for pint of the tart.
This is a ratio rather than a procedure: the book assumes you already know how to cook fruit, strain it and boil juice with sugar to a set. The two lines that matter are the sugar proportions, and they differ because green grapes carry far more acid and pectin than ripe ones.
- The sugar ratios in modern termsOne and one-eighth pounds of sugar per pint of ripe juice is about 2 1/2 cups sugar to 2 cups juice; a pound to the pint is about 2 1/4 cups to 2 cups. These figures assume a US pint of 16 fl oz; if the book is British the pint would be 20 fl oz and the proportions shift accordingly.
- Why green grapes get less sugarUnderripe grapes are high in acid and pectin and set readily, so the tart juice can be carried with less sugar without losing its balance; ripe grapes are lower in both, which is presumably why the recipe pushes the sugar up, and an all-ripe batch is the one more likely to stay syrupy.
- Getting the juiceStem the grapes, crush them, and simmer with a little water — roughly 1/2 cup per 4 lb of fruit — until the skins have given up their colour, about 10 minutes. Drip through a jelly bag without squeezing if you want a clear jelly.
- The tartrate problemGrape juice throws gritty crystals of potassium bitartrate. Chill the strained juice for 24 to 48 hours and decant it off the sediment before you boil it with sugar; skipping this is a common reason homemade grape jelly comes out sandy.
- Judging the setBoil hard and test rather than time it. The jelly stage is 220F at sea level, or 8F above the boiling point of water where you are, and it will sheet off a cold spoon in a single curtain instead of dripping.
- SealingThe recipe gives no sealing instructions. The paraffin-and-tumbler method common in this period is no longer recommended. Fill sterilised half-pint jars, leave 1/4 inch headspace, and follow a current boiling-water-bath processing time for jelly, or keep it in the refrigerator and eat it within a few weeks.
- YieldAbout 4 lb of grapes gives roughly 2 pints of juice, which with the sugar above makes four to five half-pint jars.
Grape jelly of this kind belongs to the American home-preserving tradition that grew up around native and hybrid grapes — Concord above all, released commercially in the mid-nineteenth century and grown in dooryards across the Northeast and Midwest. Because those grapes come off the vine unevenly, cooks were left with hard green clusters that would never sweeten: such underripe fruit carries the pectin and acid that make a jelly stand, and blending it with ripe fruit, as this recipe suggests, would have helped control both set and colour long before commercial pectin was on the shelf.