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Green-Grape Mint Jelly
Wash desired amount of green or partially ripe grapes, put in preserving kettle and heat till easily crushed. To each 4 lbs. of grapes add 1 bunch fresh, well-washed mint previously bruised in a bowl, and cook till grapes are soft enough to drain. Place in jelly bag, let drip, then measure the amount. Boil the juice and for each pint of it add 1 scant pound of sugar (heated) and boil for 12 minutes. It should jelly when tested on a saucer in this amount of time. Color it a mint green with vegetable liquid coloring, and fill glasses. Part of it may be left without coloring if desired, since it is naturally a beautiful color as it is. A beautiful effect may be produced by placing alternate layers of the pink and green jelly in the same glass, allowing each layer to cool before adding next.
A no-pectin-added jelly that relies entirely on the natural pectin and acid of underripe grapes. That single fact governs everything else in the method.
- Use genuinely underripe fruitUse underripe fruit -- Green or barely-blushing grapes carry more pectin and acid than fully ripe ones; the recipe allows green or only partially ripe grapes, and the riper the fruit the softer the set is likely to be.
- "Preserving kettle"A wide, heavy non-reactive pot -- stainless or enamelled. A broad pan speeds evaporation during the 12-minute boil, which matters more than depth.
- "1 bunch" of mintGenuinely vague. A large supermarket bunch, roughly 1 to 1.5 oz of leaves and stems, gives a clear but not medicinal flavour in 4 lb of fruit. Bruising in the bowl is what releases the oils; skip it and the mint barely registers.
- Draining the bagLet it drip untouched. Squeezing the bag forces pulp through and gives cloudy jelly -- the whole point of the slow drip. The recipe gives no yield; measure the juice as instructed rather than counting on a set number of glasses.
- Heated sugarWarming the sugar before it goes in keeps the boil from stalling, so the mixture returns to a full rolling boil quickly. A scant pound per pint of juice is about 2 cups.
- Testing the setTwelve minutes is a guide, not a rule; it varies with pan width and fruit. Trust the saucer test, or a thermometer reading 220F at sea level. Overboiling past the set point makes the jelly stiff and dulls the mint.
- "Vegetable liquid coloring"Ordinary liquid food colouring. Green plus a trace of blue reads as mint; add it off the heat and by drops, since the uncoloured juice is already a pale olive-green.
- The pink layerThe recipe does not say what the pink jelly is; it assumes a second, separately made jelly is on hand. Each layer must be cool and set before the next warm one goes on, as the recipe directs, or the two will bleed together.
- SealingPeriod practice was to pour paraffin over the surface in open glasses. Use half-pint canning jars with two-piece lids and process 10 minutes in a boiling-water bath, or skip processing and keep the jelly refrigerated and eat it within a month.