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Jelly Making
AVE ready at hand before commencing operations a jellybag of the coarse linen used for making dish-towels; the bag should be at least eighteen inches wide and eighteen inches long. Also have a yard of the coarse cloth known as "cheesecloth." General directions will be given first, and the different kinds of jellies that require a varying of the rules will be taken up afterward.
When the larger fruits are used they should be cut in pieces and placed over the fire in a porcelain kettle (which should always be used), with not enough water quite to cover the fruit. Cover the kettle tightly and let the fruit stew slowly until it is all broken, stirring occasionally from the bottom with a wooden spoon. The linen bag should be soaking meanwhile in hot water. The fruit has cooked sufficiently when it is so soft that the pieces may be easily crushed between the spoon and the side of the kettle. Wring the jelly-bag very dry, and, holding it over a large pan, or, better still, an earthenware bowl, turn into it the contents of the kettle. Tie the top of the bag with a strong string and hang it to drip. When the bag has hung a few minutes, carefully press its sides toward the center with two wooden spoons. By manipulating the bag a little with spoons, raising it at the center of the bottom to displace the fruit, all the juice can be obtained. Too much economy should not be exercised in this respect or the jelly will not be clear.
Measure the juice, and to every pint weigh out a pound of granulated sugar. (This quantity is modified somewhat in the particular directions which follow.) Place the juice, uncovered, over the fire and boil exactly twenty minutes. Take care that it boils steadily and not so rapidly that it will have to be removed to quiet the boiling. After the juice is placed on the fire, pour the sugar into a pan and set it in the oven to heat, stirring two or three times during the twenty minutes the juice is boiling. The sugar should be hot, and if it browns slightly about the edges it will do no harm. After twenty minutes turn the sugar into the juice. If it has been thoroughly heated, it will hiss as it falls into the liquid. Then let the mass come to a boil for not longer than three minutes, after which it is ready for the last work.
Many people consider it necessary to heat the tumblers before pouring in the jelly. This may be done, or a silver spoon may be placed in each tumbler while filling with the hot jelly. The following day if the jelly is firm and hard, pour over the top of each glass, directly on the jelly itself, one teaspoon of melted paraffine. When paraffine is hard, place covers on each glass. The paraffine can be saved, remelted and used again and again. As a curiosity, jelly of two or more colors may be put in one tumbler or glass by cutting partitions of stiff letter-paper to fit the inside of the glass. The paper must be held in position by a helper while the jelly is being poured in, and carefully withdrawn when it is nearly cold. Set the jelly in a cool, dry place that cannot be reached by a strong light. Scarcely enough can be said against putting jelly in the cellar of a house, as it is sure to be damp. It will make no difference how beautiful the jelly is, if it is not set away in the proper place, mold will form on it which always changes the taste of the jelly.
Success in jelly-making is more certain with some fruits than with other kinds, but that used should never be over ripe or frosted or fermented. If it is too ripe, it will not jelly at all; therefore it is safer to use it even a little under-ripe. An excessively wet season is fatal to fruit, as its use is not satisfactory whether it is employed in jelly-making, canning, or preserving.
These are general directions rather than a single recipe, and they hold up well apart from the sealing method and the fixed boiling time. The one thing to change is the twenty-minute clock: test the juice instead.
- Boil to a temperature, not a timerTwenty minutes suits a thin, underripe currant or apple juice and will scorch a small batch or leave a large one runny. Boil the sweetened jelly until it reaches 220F at sea level (8F above the boiling point of water where you are), or until it sheets off a cold metal spoon in two drops that run together.
- Paraffin sealsPouring melted paraffin on the surface is no longer considered a safe seal. The wax shrinks and pulls away from the glass as it cools, admitting air and mold spores, and mold on jelly can carry mycotoxins into the layer beneath. Use canning jars with two-piece lids and process filled jars in a boiling-water bath following a current tested procedure.
- The porcelain kettleThis means enamel-lined cast iron or steel, chosen so the fruit acid would not react with bare iron or copper. A heavy stainless-steel or enamelled pot does the same job. Avoid unlined copper and aluminium.
- Jelly bagCoarse linen dish-toweling is what a modern cook would replace with four layers of damp cheesecloth in a colander, or a purchased jelly bag. The text has it both ways: it tells you to work the bag with spoons to get all the juice, then warns that 'too much economy' will cloud the jelly. Forcing pulp through is what clouds it.
- Sugar by weight to juice by volumeA pound of granulated sugar to a pint of juice is roughly 450 g to 475 ml, close to equal volumes. This ratio assumes fruit with plenty of its own pectin and acid; with low-pectin fruit it will not set no matter how long you boil.
- Heating the sugarWarming the sugar in a low oven, as the text directs, keeps the boil from stalling when it goes in. The book gives no temperature. It matters more with large batches than small ones, and does no harm either way.
- "Tumblers" and the silver spoonJelly tumblers were straight-sided glasses sold for the purpose. The spoon was a heat sink to keep thin glass from cracking; modern canning jars need no such precaution, but they should be hot when filled.
- Underripe fruitThe advice to use slightly underripe fruit is sound chemistry, not superstition. Pectin degrades as fruit ripens, so a proportion of underripe fruit raises the pectin and acid that make the set possible.
- StorageThe warning against cellars was about damp reaching wax seals and paper covers. Properly sealed and processed jars keep a year in a cool, dark cupboard; light fades the color as the book says.
Jelly making occupied a whole chapter in household books of this period because it was one of the few reliable ways to carry summer fruit through winter, and because a clear, firm, brightly colored jelly was a visible test of a cook's skill. Everything here depends on the pectin naturally present in the fruit, which is why the directions fuss so much over ripeness, over the weather of the growing season, and over not extracting too much juice. Standardized commercial pectin extracts became available to American home cooks in the 1910s and 1920s, and once pectin could be added from a bottle the old anxieties about underripe currants and wet summers mattered less. The paraffin seal, common in this era, survived in print far longer than it should have; it was still being recommended well into the twentieth century and has since been dropped from tested preserving guidance in favor of the boiling-water bath.