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Black current jelly
Put to ten quarts of ripe dry black currants, one quart of water; put them in a large stew-pof, tie paper close over them, and set them for two hours in a cool oven. Squeeze them through a fine cloth, and add to every quart of juice a pound and a half of loaf sugar broken into small pieces. Stir it till the sugar is melted, when it boils, skim it quite cleam. Boil it pretty quick over a clear fire, till it jellies, which is known by dipping a skimmer into the jelley and holding it in the air; when it hangs to the spoon in a drop, it is done. If the jelley is boiled too long, it will loose its flavour and shrink very much. Pour it into pots, cover them with brandy papers, and keep them in a dry place. Red and white jellies are made in the same way.
A straightforward high-pectin jelly whose only real difficulty is knowing when to stop boiling. Blackcurrants are so rich in pectin and acid that no commercial pectin is wanted; the risk is overcooking, which the original rightly warns against.
- The hinge: the sheet testThe hinge: knowing when to stop -- "Hangs to the spoon in a drop" is a drop or flake test judged by eye; a related later test is the sheeting test, where the jelly runs off the skimmer in a sliding sheet rather than separate drips. On a thermometer, jelly point is about 220F at sea level, roughly 8F above boiling water; subtract 2F for every 1,000 feet of elevation. Blackcurrant jelly can reach this quickly once the sugar is dissolved.
- "A cool oven"Roughly 200-275F in modern terms. The covered pot with paper tied over it is a low, moist steam-extraction: the fruit softens and releases juice without boiling, which keeps the flavour fresh. A covered casserole or Dutch oven with a lid does the same job.
- Quantities and scalingTen quarts of currants is somewhere in the region of 12-15 lb of fruit — a serious summer batch. The working ratio is what matters: 1 quart water to 10 quarts fruit, then 1 1/2 lb sugar (about 3 1/3 cups granulated) to every quart of strained juice. To scale down, keep the water at one tenth the volume of the fruit.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was hard refined cane sugar sold in cones and broken up with nippers, prized because it was cleaner than the brown sugars of the day. Ordinary granulated sugar is its direct descendant and needs no breaking.
- Squeezing the clothSqueezing through a fine cloth gives more juice but a cloudier jelly. If you want it clear, let the pulp drip through a jelly bag or double muslin unpressed; the yield drops by perhaps a fifth.
- SkimmingSkim the scum as it rises and again just before potting. A small knob of butter stirred in at the end will collapse most of the foam, though it slightly dulls the colour.
- Brandy papers and storageA round of paper dipped in brandy, laid directly on the hot jelly surface, was the period seal — the spirit discouraged mould. Modern practice is sterilised jars, hot jelly to within 1/4 inch of the rim, and a 5-minute boiling-water bath; sealed jars keep a year in a dark cupboard.
- "Red and white jellies"Redcurrants and white currants, not other fruit. Both work on the same method, though white currants give a paler, milder jelly and slightly less pectin.
Blackcurrants were a kitchen-garden staple in Britain long before they were a commercial crop, valued as much for the throat syrups and cordials made from them as for jelly, and the fruit was widely reckoned medicinal — the old name "quinsy berry" (quinsy being a throat abscess) records that reputation. The oven-steaming step in this receipt belongs to a period when a cooling brick oven, still holding heat hours after the bread came out, was a free resource no cook wasted; low-temperature jobs like drying fruit, rendering, and juice extraction were slotted into that falling heat. The reliance on loaf sugar dates the recipe to the era when refined sugar came as a solid cone and had to be broken and pounded before use, and the brandy paper is a reminder that a preserve's success was judged over a whole winter of damp larder storage, with mould, not spoilage bacteria, as the enemy the housekeeper actually expected to fight.