Home › Vegetable Gelatine › Fruit Jelly
Fruit Jelly
2 cups fruit juice 1 cup sugar 1/4 cup lemon juice 1/3 box--1/4 ounce--vegetable gelatine 1 cup boiling water Soak the vegetable gelatine for twenty minutes or more in warm water. Drain and cook in the boiling water. Boil five to ten minutes, or until perfectly clear, and strain into the fruit juice to which has been added the sugar. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Turn into molds wet with cold water, and let it stand until ready to serve; then unmold.
A straightforward agar jelly that needs almost no translation, but two details govern whether it sets clear and firm: the gelatine must be fully boiled out, and the acid must stay out of the pot.
- Vegetable gelatine is agar-agarSold in this period as bleached shreds or bars in a carton, it is the same seaweed extract now sold as agar flakes, bars (kanten) or powder. It is not interchangeable spoon for spoon with animal gelatine, and it is not the same as modern pectin-based jel powders.
- What a quarter ounce meansA third of a box is given as 1/4 ounce, about 7 grams. That is a good deal of agar for roughly three and a quarter cups of liquid and will give a firm, sliceable jelly that unmolds cleanly rather than a wobbly one. Powdered agar is far denser than shreds by volume, so weigh rather than measure by spoon; if you want a softer set, 4-5 g is nearer modern practice.
- It has to boilAgar does not dissolve in hot water the way gelatine does. It needs a genuine rolling boil for five to ten minutes, and the instruction to cook it "until perfectly clear" is the real test. Undissolved shreds will settle out and leave a grainy layer at the bottom of the mold.
- Keep the acid out of the boilThe recipe adds the lemon and fruit juice after the agar is cooked and strained. Prolonged boiling with acid breaks agar down and weakens the set, so follow the order given even if it seems fussier than combining everything at once.
- Strain while very hotAgar begins to gel at around 95-105F (35-40C), well above room temperature. Pour it into the juice promptly and stir at once; if it stalls on the way it will thread and set in strings rather than blending smoothly.
- No refrigeration needed"Let it stand until ready to serve" is accurate rather than casual. Agar sets at room temperature and holds its shape in warm weather, which is exactly why it was favored in kitchens without reliable ice.
- Fruit juice choiceFresh pineapple, kiwi and papaya carry protease enzymes, but those attack animal gelatine, not agar, so they are safe here. Very tannic or heavily pulped juices will cloud the finished jelly; strain them first if you want the clear effect the recipe is after.
- YieldAbout three and a quarter cups, filling a small ring mold or six individual molds. Wetting the molds with cold water, as directed, is still the easiest way to release the jelly without dipping it in hot water.
Agar-agar reached Western kitchens by way of Japan, where it is known as kanten and has long been boiled from red seaweeds and set into blocks; it was well established in European and American use by the late nineteenth century, both in laboratories as a bacterial culture medium and in the kitchen. Its appeal to a book called Meatless Cookery is direct: ordinary gelatine is rendered from the bones, hides and connective tissue of animals, which put every molded jelly, aspic and charlotte out of reach for vegetarians. Vegetable gelatine solved that at a stroke, and it carried a second advantage in an age of unreliable iceboxes, since it sets and holds at room temperature. In books of this period, many of them tied to the vegetarian and health-reform movements that flourished in the early twentieth century, it mattered precisely because it reopened an entire category of dessert.