Currant Jelly, Red
INGREDIENTS. Red currants; to every pint of juice allow lb. of loaf sugar. AVERAGE COST, 8d. to 10d. per pot.
Have the fruit gathered in fine weather; pick it from the stalks, put it into a jar, and place this jar in a saucepan of boiling water over the fire, and let it simmer gently until the juice is well drawn from the currants; then strain them through a jelly-bag or fine cloth, and if the jelly is wished very clear, do not squeeze them too much, as the skin and pulp from the fruit will be pressed through with the juice, and so make the jelly muddy. Measure the juice, and to each pint allow lb. of loaf sugar; put these into a preserving-pan, set it over the fire, and keep stirring the jelly until it is done, carefully removing every particle of scum as it rises, using a wooden or silver spoon for the purpose, as metal or iron ones would spoil the colour of the jelly. When it has boiled from 20 minutes to 1/2 hour, put a little of the jelly on a plate, and if firm when cool, it is done.
Take it off the fire, pour it into small gallipots, cover each of the pots with an oiled paper, and then with a piece of tissue-paper, brushed over_on both sides with the white of an egg. Label the pots, adding the year when the jelly was made, and store it away in a dry place. A jam may be made with the currants, if they are not squeezed too dry, by adding a few fresh raspberries, and boiling all together, with sufficient sugar to sweeten it nicely.
As this jam is not worth storing away, but is only for immediate eating, a smaller proportion of sugar than usual will be found enough: it answers very well for CURRANT PUDDING. children's puddings, or for a nursery preserve.
TIME. From to 1 hour to extract the juice ; 20 minutes to 1/2 hour to boil the jelly.
SEASONABLE. - Make this in July.
Note. Should the above proportion of sugar not be found sufficient for some tastes, add an extra lb. to every pint of juice, making altogether 1 lb.
A classic uncooked-fruit extraction: the currants give up their juice in a jar set in simmering water, so the pulp is never boiled and the jelly stays bright. Redcurrants are among the most pectin-rich fruits in the kitchen, which is why nothing but sugar is needed to set them.
- The sugar proportionThe quantity per pint of juice has been lost from the ingredient line, but the closing note resolves it: the standard proportion here is 3/4 lb sugar to each pint of juice, with the option of an extra 1/4 lb to make 1 lb for a sweeter, firmer set. A pint in a British book of this period is 20 fl oz, so roughly 340 g sugar to 570 ml juice.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was hard refined sugar broken from a cone, prized because it was cleaner than the brown sugars of the day and threw less scum. Ordinary granulated white sugar is its direct replacement; preserving sugar, with its larger crystals, dissolves more slowly and scums a little less.
- The water-bath extractionStanding a jar of currants in a pan of boiling water is a gentle double-boiler method that draws the juice without breaking down the skins. Allow up to an hour, keep the water at a steady simmer, and top it up as it evaporates. A heatproof bowl over a pan works much the same way.
- Do not press the bagThis is the hinge of the recipe. Let the juice drip through the jelly bag under its own weight, ideally for several hours; squeezing forces pulp and skin fragments through and the jelly turns cloudy. Cloudy jelly sets and tastes the same, but the clarity is the whole point of making jelly rather than jam.
- Spoons and pansThe warning against iron is sound: bare iron and unlined copper react with fruit acids and dull the colour. Stainless steel is fine and was not available in 1861. A wide, heavy-based pan gives faster evaporation and a shorter boil.
- Testing the setThe cold-plate test given here still works. Modern practice is to confirm it with a thermometer: setting point is 220F / 105C at sea level. Twenty minutes to half an hour of hard boiling is realistic, but go by the test rather than the clock.
- Covering the potsGallipots were small glazed earthenware jars; the oiled paper and egg-washed tissue dried to a tight skin over the mouth of the pot. Use hot, sterilised jars with proper lids instead, filled to within a few millimetres of the top and sealed while the jelly is still very hot. Refrigerate after opening.
- Yield and the second-pressing jamHow much finished jelly you get depends on the sugar proportion used and how far it is boiled down. The pulp left in the bag genuinely does make a serviceable jam with a handful of raspberries and less sugar than usual, but with a low sugar content it will not keep: refrigerate it and eat it within a week or two.
Redcurrant jelly earned its place in every well-run Victorian larder less as a preserve for bread than as a kitchen ingredient: it was the standard accompaniment to mutton, venison and hare, the gloss in a brown sauce, and the sweetening for a Cumberland sauce. Bushes were a fixture of English kitchen gardens, cropping heavily in a short July window, which is why the book fixes the season so firmly and tells the cook to label the pots with the year. The instruction to avoid iron spoons reflects a period when much domestic ware was still cast iron or tinned metal, and discolouration of pale preserves was a real and visible fault. The egg-white-and-tissue seal was the common domestic method before reliable screw-top jars: as the albumen dried it shrank into a hard airtight film over the mouth of the pot.