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Spiced Grapes
The whole grapes or the pulp alone (put through a colander) may be spiced, proceeding as for spiced apples, plums, or prunes.
WILD GRAPE JELLY No. I (With Crab Apple) Wash, stem, and heat grapes, adding to them one-third part crab apples, simmering together with barely enough water to cover and keep from burning. Crush the fruit gently and cook till soft and breaking-about two hours. Strain without squeezing, letting drip over night. Measure juice and let heat, skimming carefully. Allow one pint of sugar for each pint of juice and proceed as for other jellies.
WILD GRAPE JELLY No. 2 SPICED Cornelia Bedford gives the following as vouched for "by an old housekeeper" (Table Talk, Oct. '05): "Pick from the stems and wash sufficient wild grapes, which are still slightly green, to measure one peck. Put them into a preserving kettle with one quart of vinegar, one-quarter of a cup each of finely broken stick cinnamon and whole cloves. Heat slowly to the boiling point and simmer until the grapes are soft. Turn into a bag made of two thicknesses of fine cheesecloth and let drain without pressing. When no more will drip through put the clear juice over the fire in a clean kettle and boil for twenty minutes. Have six pounds of granulated sugar spread on shallow pans and warm it without melting in the open oven. When the juice has boiled as directed pour in the sugar, stir until dissolved, boil for five minutes, and pour into glasses."
Two wild grape jellies and a note on spicing table grapes, written when every household knew how to hang a jelly bag. The measurements are volume-based and the sealing step is simply absent, so both need translating.
- Identify the fruit firstWild grapes (Vitis riparia, V. labrusca, V. aestivalis and their kin) are safe, but Canada moonseed (Menispermum canadense) grows in the same hedgerows, carries similar blue-black clusters, and is poisonous. Grapes have tendrils and multiple pip-shaped seeds; moonseed has no tendrils and a single crescent seed. If you cannot tell them apart with the vine in hand, buy Concords.
- A peckA dry peck is 8 quarts, roughly 10 to 12 lb of grapes on the stem. That is a large batch for one kettle; halving it is sensible, and the vinegar, spice and sugar scale straight down.
- Slightly green grapes are the pointUnder-ripe wild grapes carry the most pectin and acid, which is why the old housekeeper specified them. Fully ripe fruit will give juice that tastes better and sets worse; the usual compromise is about three-quarters ripe fruit to one-quarter under-ripe.
- Sugar by the pintIn jelly No. 1, a pint of sugar means 2 cups, about 14 oz, not a pound. Warming sugar "in the open oven" meant the residual heat of a cooling range, gentle enough to warm the sugar without melting it; a few minutes in a low oven does the same job. Modern granulated sugar dissolves readily enough that this step is optional.
- Do not squeeze the bagThis is the hinge in both recipes. Pressing the pulp forces fine pulp and sediment through and turns the jelly cloudy; overnight dripping is what buys the clarity. Two layers of fine cheesecloth or a scalded jelly bag, and leave it alone.
- Judge the set, not the clock"Boil for five minutes" assumes a wood range and a particular kettle. Work to 220F at sea level (roughly 8F above the boiling point of water where you are), or to the sheeting test off a cold spoon. Wild grape juice that has boiled twenty minutes before the sugar goes in may reach the set faster than stated.
- Tartrate crystalsWild grape juice is high in tartaric acid and will throw gritty crystals in the finished jar. Chilling the strained juice overnight and decanting it off the sediment before boiling with sugar prevents most of this.
- SealingThe original stops at "pour into glasses," that is, jelly tumblers, which in this period were commonly finished with melted paraffin. Paraffin seals are no longer recommended: they crack, admit mould, and are unreliable for long storage. Fill sterilised half-pint jars, leave 1/4 inch headspace, and either water-bath process them or refrigerate and use within a month.
Wild grapes were one of the few fruits an American household could gather for nothing, and the grape-and-crab-apple pairing in the first recipe is a pectin marriage rather than a flavour one: crab apples are so high in pectin and acid that they were routinely added to slack-setting fruits before commercial pectin was on sale. The spiced version is credited to Cornelia Bedford, a cooking-school-trained household writer who contributed regularly to Table Talk, the Philadelphia domestic monthly, and she is careful to pass on the authority as hearsay from "an old housekeeper" rather than claim it herself, which is how a good deal of kitchen knowledge travelled into print. Vinegar-and-clove sweet pickling of fruit, applied here to grapes as it was to apples, plums and prunes, belonged to the cold-meat side of the table: a spiced jelly of this kind was presumably intended for game, ham and mutton rather than for toast.