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Green Grape Jelly
Gather Catawba grapes before ripening. Pick them from the stem, wash them, and put them in a stone jar. Set the jar in a kettle of cold water over a hot fire. When the juice comes out of the grapes, take the kettle off and strain the grapes. To each pint of juice put one pound of the best loaf sugar. Boil twenty minutes in the kettle. Ripe grape jelly may be made in the same way.--Mrs. E.
A steam-extraction jelly of the simplest kind: unripe grapes heated in a covered vessel until they give up their juice, then boiled hard with sugar. The recipe assumes knowledge the modern cook has to supply, chiefly how to tell when the jelly has set.
- The hinge: pick them greenUnderripe grapes are the whole reason this works. Pectin and acid are both at their peak before the fruit colors and sweetens, which is why no added pectin or lemon appears anywhere in the recipe. Riper grapes are lower in both and may be slower or less certain to set.
- Stone jar in a kettleThis is a water bath used as a double boiler: a heatproof jar or bowl of grapes set in a pot of water so the fruit heats gently and steams in its own juice rather than scorching. A stainless bowl over a pot of simmering water does the same job; heat until the juice runs freely, which is the recipe's own signal.
- Loaf sugarRefined cane sugar, sold in hard conical loaves and broken up for use, prized because it was cleaner than brown or muscovado. Ordinary granulated sugar is its direct descendant; use it by weight, one pound to each pint of juice.
- Pint to poundA pint of grape juice weighs roughly a pound, so this is close to a one-to-one ratio by weight. In practical terms: 2 cups juice to a pound of sugar, about 2 1/4 cups.
- StrainingStrain through a damp jelly bag or several layers of cheesecloth and let it drip without squeezing. Pressing the pulp forces through fine sediment and gives a cloudy jelly.
- Twenty minutes is a guide, not a ruleSet depends on the fruit, the pan and the volume. Start testing at fifteen minutes: the jelly is done at 220F at sea level, or when the last drops sheet off a cold spoon in a single curtain instead of falling separately.
- CatawbaAn American slip-skin grape, still grown but rarely in supermarkets. Any tart green grape, wild fox grape or thinnings from a vine will behave the same way; table grapes picked ripe will not.
- Yield and keepingTwo pounds of grapes gives roughly a pint of juice; expect two to three half-pint jars. The recipe says nothing about sealing; jelly of this period was commonly poured hot into glasses and covered with paper, sometimes brandied. Refrigerate and use within a month, or follow a current water-bath canning schedule if you want it shelf-stable.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, is full of short recipes signed with an initial, and this one belongs to the summer economy of a household with vines in the yard. The Catawba named here is an American grape, generally traced to the Carolinas and popularized in the Ohio valley in the mid-nineteenth century as a wine grape; by the 1870s it was widely planted in the East. The technique of drawing juice with gentle heat rather than boiling the fruit outright was standard for clear jellies before commercial pectin arrived in the 1910s.