Gooseberry Jelly
INGREDIENTS.
Gooseberries; to every pint of juice allow lb. of loaf sugar.
Put the gooseberries, after cutting off the tops and tails, into a preserving-pan, and stir them over the fire until they are quite soft; then strain them through a sieve, and to every pint of juice allow lb. of ver sugar. Boil the juice and sugar together for nearly hour, stirring and skimming all the time; and if the jelly appears firm when a little of it is poured on to a plate, it is done, and should then be taken up and put into small pots. Cover the pots with oiled and egged papers, the same as for currant jelly, and store away in a dry place.
TIME. hour to simmer the gooseberries without the sugar; hour to boil the juice.
SEASONABLE.-Make in July.
A two-ingredient preserve that depends entirely on gooseberries being high in both pectin and acid. The original's fractions have dropped out of the text, so treat the quantities below as the standard proportions for a fruit jelly of this type rather than as a reading of the page.
- Sugar proportionVictorian jelly recipes commonly allow between 3/4 lb and 1 lb of sugar to each pint of strained juice. The amount printed here has been lost, so work from a current jelly recipe's ratio rather than guessing at the gap.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone, prized because it gave a clear syrup with little scum. Ordinary granulated or preserving sugar does the same job now; preserving sugar's larger crystals dissolve more slowly and throw less froth.
- Use underripe fruitGreen, hard gooseberries picked in early July carry far more pectin than ripe ones. Fully ripe dessert gooseberries are much lower in pectin and acid and may give a syrup that fails to set.
- Preserving panA wide, shallow, unlined copper or heavy stainless pan. Width matters more than capacity: evaporation is what brings the jelly to setting point. Avoid untreated aluminium or cast iron with acidic fruit.
- StrainingA sieve gives a cloudy jelly. For a clear one, hang the cooked pulp in a scalded jelly bag and let it drip without squeezing, which takes several hours.
- The plate testThis is the hinge of the recipe. Chill a saucer in the freezer, drop a teaspoon of jelly on it, wait a minute and push it with a fingertip: a set jelly wrinkles. On a thermometer, setting point is 104-105C (220F). Boiling time varies with the fruit and the pan far more than any stated half-hour suggests.
- Covering the potsOiled and egged papers -- a paper laid directly on the surface of the jelly and a second paper brushed with egg white stuck down over the pot -- were the period seal. Use sterilised jars with two-piece lids, filled hot to within 1/4 inch of the rim, and refrigerate after opening.
- YieldRoughly 3 lb of gooseberries gives about a pint of juice, and a pint of juice with its sugar makes around 1 1/2 lb of jelly, or two small jars.
Gooseberries were a British obsession in the nineteenth century: gooseberry clubs across Lancashire, Cheshire and the Midlands competed to grow the heaviest single berry, and hundreds of named varieties were in circulation when this book's parent volumes were compiled. The fruit's short season -- Beeton marks it July -- and its unusually high pectin and acid content made it the natural first preserve of the summer, before currants and then the stone fruits came in. Jellies of this kind were strained clear and set in small pots, served with cold meats and in tarts; the oiled-and-egged paper covering described here was the standard household seal before screw-top jars became cheap and general.