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Currant Jelly
Use the same proportions as in the preceding, only using all currants instead of currants and berries. This makes a darker, heavier jelly than the combination of currants and berries.
A cross-reference rather than a standalone recipe: it points back to the preceding currant-and-berry jelly for proportions. Working from the standard practice of the period fills the gap.
- The missing proportionsJelly recipes of the period commonly use equal measures of strained juice and sugar — a cup of sugar per cup of juice, or pound for pound. The preceding recipe is not reproduced here, so cup-for-cup is a reasonable working assumption rather than a certainty.
- Currants need no added pectinRed currants are among the highest-pectin, highest-acid fruits in the kitchen, which is why the old recipes call for nothing but fruit and sugar. Added commercial pectin is unnecessary here and can give a firmer, more solid set than the recipe intends.
- Slightly underripe fruit sets bestPectin declines as currants ripen. A proportion of just-turned, firm berries gives a cleaner, firmer jelly than fully soft fruit.
- Do not squeeze the bagThis is the hinge of the whole operation. Let the cooked fruit drip through a jelly bag or several layers of cheesecloth unaided, even if it takes hours; pressing forces pulp through and gives a cloudy jelly. All currants rather than a berry mix already yields the darker, heavier result described here.
- Knowing when it is doneThe period test is the sheet test — jelly that runs off a cold spoon in a sheet rather than drops. On a thermometer that is 220F at sea level, or 8F above the boiling point of water where you are.
- Sealing has changedJars of the era were topped with melted paraffin, which is no longer considered a reliable seal. Current practice is two-piece lids and a boiling-water bath, about 10 minutes for half-pints, adjusted for altitude.
- YieldRoughly 3 lb of currants gives about 4 cups of juice, which with equal sugar makes something in the range of five half-pint jars.
Red currants (Ribes rubrum) were a staple of northern European gardens long before they were a commercial crop, valued precisely for the quality this entry describes — a jelly that sets hard with nothing but sugar, and that cuts the richness of mutton, venison and game birds. In American cookbooks the currant patch was a fixture of the kitchen garden, and jelly-making one of the fixed rituals of early summer, before the fruit softened and its setting power fell off. Good Things to Eat (1911) was written by Rufus Estes, who cooked for the Pullman Company's private railcars and was among the first African American chefs to publish a cookbook under his own name; the terse, cross-referencing style of entries like this one reflects a professional writing for people who already knew the basic method. Currants themselves became harder to grow in the United States in the decades after this book appeared, as states restricted Ribes plantings because the genus hosts white pine blister rust — one reason currant jelly is less familiar on American tables now than it was to Estes's readers.