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Barberry Jelly
Barberry Jelly is firmer and of better color if made from fruit picked before the frost comes, while some of the berries are still green. Make same as Currant Jelly, allowing one cup water to one peck barberries.
A cross-reference recipe: the method is the book's Currant Jelly, with barberries substituted and a little water added because the berries are drier and tougher than currants. Almost everything that matters here is in the fruit itself.
- Pick early, and pick some greenUnderripe fruit generally carries more pectin and acid than fully ripe fruit, which is likely why the original insists on fruit gathered before frost with green berries still in the mix. Overripe, frost-softened fruit tends to set poorly.
- A peckA dry peck is 8 quarts, roughly 10 to 12 lb of berries. One cup of water to a peck is a very small amount — just enough to keep the fruit from scorching before its own juice runs. Scale it as written rather than adding more water to make the mashing easier.
- The Currant Jelly method, in briefBroadly, the method runs: mash the fruit with the water, heat gently until the juice runs and the berries collapse, then drain through a jelly bag; boil the juice, add an equal measure of heated sugar, boil until it sets, and pour into hot jars. Follow the book's own Currant Jelly recipe for its exact times.
- Do not squeeze the bagBarberry juice is naturally cloudy and clouds further under pressure. Let it drip, however slow, if you want the clear color the recipe is promising.
- Sugar by measure, not weight'Equal measure' most likely means cup for cup of juice rather than pound for pound. Warming the sugar first keeps the boil from stalling.
- Test for setBarberries are high in pectin, so the finish can be quick. Work to 220F, or to the sheeting test off a cold spoon, and stop there; overcooked barberry jelly turns dark and gummy.
- SealingThe book's era finished jelly glasses with melted paraffin. Use half-pint canning jars and a boiling-water bath instead, or treat it as refrigerator jelly.
- YieldExpect roughly 3 to 4 cups of juice per gallon of berries. Halve or quarter the batch unless you have a genuine barberry hedge.
- Sourcing the fruitCommon barberry (Berberis vulgaris) is restricted or prohibited for planting and sale in a number of states, and Japanese barberry is regulated as invasive in others. Check local rules before buying or moving plants; foraged fruit from an existing shrub is another matter.
Barberries were a fixture of New England dooryards and stone walls in the nineteenth century, valued as much for the sharp scarlet fruit as for the hedge — the berries went into jelly, into conserves with raisins, and were pickled or candied in clusters as a garnish for game and cold meats, which is why they turn up so casually in a book that assumes the cook has access to them. The astringency that makes them unpleasant raw is exactly what makes them good jelly fruit: high acid and high pectin, needing nothing but sugar. Their disappearance from American kitchens was largely deliberate. Common barberry is an alternate host for wheat stem rust, and a federal and state eradication campaign beginning around 1918 pulled up millions of bushes across the grain belt over the following decades, which is also why the shrub remains regulated in many states today. By the time later editions of this book were being revised, a recipe calling for a peck of barberries had quietly become a period document.