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Currant and Raspberry Jelly
Use equal parts of currants and raspberries, and proceed as for Currant Jelly.
A one-line recipe that assumes you have the Currant Jelly entry in front of you. That method — juice extracted from barely crushed fruit, drained through a bag, then boiled with sugar — is what governs here.
- What "equal parts" meansMost likely equal weights of stemmed currants and raspberries before juicing, though the recipe does not say and "parts" could as easily have been read as measure. Either reading gives a jelly in which the raspberry perfume tends to dominate the currant.
- The currants are the structureRed currants are among the highest-pectin and highest-acid fruits in the kitchen; raspberries are lower in pectin and less acid than currants. The currants are what lets this set without added pectin, so do not shift the ratio far toward raspberries.
- Sugar ratioA pound of sugar (nearer 2 1/4 cups) to a pint of strained juice is a common proportion in books of this period, usually added once the juice is boiling; the Currant Jelly entry this recipe points to is not reproduced here, so its exact proportion cannot be confirmed. Warming the sugar first, a direction found in a number of books of this date, keeps the boil from stalling.
- Judging the setWhere the old books say "until it jellies on a cold saucer," a thermometer is faster: 220F at sea level, less 2F for every 1,000 feet of elevation. Boiling time after the sugar goes in varies with pan and batch size; watch the thermometer rather than the clock, since long boiling darkens the color and dulls the raspberry.
- Don't squeeze the bagLet the fruit drip through the jelly bag unaided, even if it takes overnight. Pressing forces pulp and fine sediment through and gives a cloudy jelly, which is the one fault this recipe cannot be corrected for after the fact.
- SealingLowney's era finished jelly under a layer of melted paraffin. That practice is no longer recommended; the wax shrinks and cracks and lets in mold. Use current water-bath canning guidance for jelly jars, or simply refrigerate and use within a few weeks.
- YieldRoughly 4 lb of mixed fruit yields about 2 to 2 1/2 pints of juice, which makes four to five half-pint jars.
Lowney's Cook Book (1907), compiled by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney chocolate company, is best remembered for its confectionery, but it carries a full preserving section built on cross-references — write the currant jelly method once, then vary it. Currant and raspberry is among those variations in English and American practice, and the logic is practical rather than sentimental: red currants ripen alongside summer raspberries and supply the pectin and acid that raspberries lack, while the raspberries supply perfume the currant has little of. Red currants themselves grew scarce in much of the United States not long after this book appeared, when states began banning Ribes cultivation to check white pine blister rust — one reason a jelly that every 1907 housekeeper could make from the garden is now a specialty item.