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Mint Jelly
Wash the mint and chop it fine. To each cup of chopped mint add one-fourth cup sugar and one-fourth cup water and let it stand overnight or for several hours. Place it over the heat and bring it to the boiling-point.
Make apple jelly, using two-thirds cup sugar to each cup of apple-juice. When the jelly test is observed, add green vegetable coloring and one or two tablespoons of the prepared mint for each quart of apple-juice.
A two-part method: a sweetened mint infusion made ahead, then a straight apple jelly tinted and flavoured at the last moment. The whole point is that the mint goes in after the boiling is done.
- The hingeAdd the mint syrup once the jelly has reached setting point, as the recipe directs, rather than boiling the mint along with the jelly; prolonged boiling is generally said to dull both the mint flavour and the colour.
- Which applesUnderripe, tart apples with skins and cores left in give the pectin and acid the set depends on. Crab apples or windfall Bramleys work; a bag of ripe supermarket dessert apples often will not set at all.
- Apple juice means your ownThe recipe assumes juice strained from cooked apples through a jelly bag, not bottled clarified juice, which has been filtered and pasteurised past usefulness. Do not squeeze the bag if you want a clear jelly.
- "The jelly test"Period cooks usually meant the sheeting test: syrup running off a spoon in a single curtain rather than in drops. A thermometer reading of about 220F at sea level, or a wrinkling drop on a chilled plate, marks roughly the same point.
- Sugar ratioTwo-thirds cup sugar per cup of juice is lower than the three-quarters cup per cup usual in modern preserving, and relies on a strongly pectic juice. Expect a longer boil, and skim the scum before potting.
- ColouringThe green colour is entirely cosmetic. A few drops of liquid food colouring, or nothing at all, will do; the jelly is naturally pale amber to pink.
- Mint quantityOne or two tablespoons of syrup per quart of juice is restrained. Taste the pot before potting and add more if you want it more pronounced.
- Yield and keepingA quart of apple juice with this sugar gives roughly three to four half-pint jars. For shelf storage, use a current tested water-bath processing time; the book's silence on sealing reflects an era of paraffin-topped glasses.
Mint jelly belongs to the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century fashion for clear, brightly tinted jellies served in cut glass, and it found a place on the table as an accompaniment to roast lamb and mutton — chiefly an American fixture, since in Britain the standard accompaniment was and remains mint sauce, the older preparation of chopped mint in vinegar and sugar of which the jelly is a sweetened cousin. Its appearance here, in a preserves chapter, reflects how thoroughly apple jelly had become the household's neutral base: cheap, reliably setting because of the fruit's own pectin and acid, and willing to carry whatever flavour was added — mint, currant, rose geranium, quince. The instruction to add green vegetable colouring is a period marker in itself; commercial food dyes had only recently come under federal scrutiny in the United States following the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, and cookbooks of the era used them freely to make a dish look like what the diner expected it to taste of.