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Apple Jelly (Select the apples)
In apple jelly select the apples with the largest amount of pectin; Lady-blush or fall pippins are best. The first makes a bright red jelly, the latter a jelly almost white. Wipe the fruit, cut into pieces without paring or removing the seeds. Put them in a porcelain kettle and barely cover with water. Cover the kettle and boil about fifteen minutes or until the apples are thoroughly tender. Then drain in a flannel jelly bag. Do not squeeze or press or the jelly will be clouded. To every pint of juice allow one pound of granulated sugar. Put the juice in a porcelain kettle, bring quickly to a boil, add the sugar, stir until the sugar dissolves. Then boil rapidly and continuously until it jellies, about fifteen or twenty minutes. It may be necessary to boil it thirty or thirty-five min. utes before it jellies properly. It is wise, however, to commence testing after the first fifteen minutes' boiling. To do this, take out a teaspoonful of boiling jelly, put it on the bottom of a saucer, and stand in a cold place for a moment. Then scrape to one side with a spoon. If jellied, the surface will be partly solid. If it remains liquid, go on boiling and try again. Remember while that jelly has been cooling, the boiling is going on, and it is wise to try again at once. If boiled past jellying point, you will have a thick, sticky syrup and nothing will make it jelly. This mistake occurs frequently where persons do not understand the chemical process of jelly making; they boil it too long. Just as soon as the surface in the saucer jellies, roll the tumblers quickly in boiling water; remove the jelly from the fire and fill the tumblers; stand aside uncovered for twenty-four hours. Then fasten the tops with two layers of tissue paper; the edges may be pasted down with the white of egg. Do not use metallic covers or even pasteboard, or your jelly will become sour and ooze out of the tumblers. After the tops are thoroughly fastened and the edges dry, dip a paste-brush or sponge in water and just moisten the top of the paper. This moistening stretches the paper, and as it dries again it shrinks and forms a covering as smooth and tight as bladder skin. I do not recommend jelly covered with brandied paper. In my hands it is never satisfactory. Jelly in cooling forms its own airproof cover, and then, if it has a porous top, like paper, will keep forever. A dark, cool closet is best for it. All jellies can be made after this recipe.
A clear, well-taught jelly recipe whose only real weakness is the finishing: tissue-paper covers belong to a period before reliable canning jars. Everything up to the filling stage still works exactly as written.
- The hinge: stop at the first sign of setThe author is right that overboiled jelly can never be rescued, and she is right to start testing early. The saucer test she describes is sound; a thermometer reading of 220°F at sea level (8°F above the boiling point of water where you live) is the same signal by another route.
- Apples and pectinUnderripe, tart, firm apples carry the most pectin, and the cores and skins she tells you to leave in carry much of it. Lady-blush and fall pippins are largely gone from commerce; Granny Smith, Bramley, crabapples or windfalls from any old tree will set well. Modern dessert apples like Gala or Fuji are too low in both acid and pectin to jell reliably on their own.
- Porcelain kettleThis means an enamelled or otherwise non-reactive pan, not stoneware. Bare iron or aluminium will dull the colour and can pick up a metallic taste from the fruit acid. A wide pan is better than a tall one, since evaporation is what concentrates the sugar.
- MeasuresA pint of juice is 2 cups; a pound of granulated sugar is about 2¼ cups. The ratio here is high but standard for jelly set by the fruit's own pectin, and cutting the sugar makes a firm set less likely.
- The jelly bagFlannel is traditional; several layers of damp muslin or a jelly bag in a stand works the same way. Her instruction not to squeeze is the difference between clear jelly and cloudy. Expect the drip to take several hours, or overnight.
- Tumblers, and why not to seal her way"Tumblers" are straight-sided jelly glasses. Do not follow the tissue-paper-and-egg-white finish: an unsealed jelly left open for a day and then covered with porous paper invites surface mould, and "will keep forever" was optimistic even then. Fill hot, clean half-pint canning jars, leaving ¼ inch of headspace, and process in a boiling-water bath per current canning guidance.
- Brandied paperThe rejected alternative was a disc of paper soaked in spirits laid on the jelly's surface as a mould inhibitor. It is obsolete for the same reason as the tissue paper — a proper vacuum seal does the job.
- YieldNot stated. Four pounds of apples will give several cups of juice, which with the sugar here fills a few half-pint jars; expect to judge it by eye.
What dates the recipe most precisely is the confident talk of pectin: the substance had been named early in the nineteenth century, but commercial bottled pectin only reached home kitchens in the 1910s and 20s, so a cook of this period had to source her setting power from the fruit itself — hence the insistence on particular varieties and on leaving cores and skins in the pot. The dismissal of brandied paper and metal covers in favour of moistened tissue is the voice of someone who has watched a lot of jelly go sour in a closet, and the confiding aside "in my hands it is never satisfactory" is typical of the American domestic-science writers of the 1890s and 1900s, who taught by asserting their own tested experience against inherited household habit.