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Kumquat Jelly
Cut one box of kumquats in slices, add sufficient cold water to cover; bring slowly to the boiling point and cook moderately for three-fourths of an hour. Strain and to one and one-half cups of this juice, add one-half cup of sugar, one fourth cup of white wine, and five teaspoons of Orange Curaçoa. Garnish with halves of kumquats cooked till soft in syrup, drained and rolled in powdered sugar.
A short recipe that assumes more knowledge than it states, chiefly about what makes the jelly set. Read the note on gelatine before you start.
- No setting agent is listedAs written the dish depends entirely on pectin drawn from kumquat peel and seeds during the three-quarter-hour boil, and 1½ cups of juice diluted with wine and liqueur will usually stay syrupy rather than set. If you want a moulded jelly, plan on softening about 1 tablespoon (one envelope) of powdered gelatine in cold water and dissolving it in the hot sweetened juice.
- One box of kumquatsA market box of the period was a small retail measure, perhaps around a quart, but the size was not fixed. It matters less than it looks: the recipe takes only 1½ cups from whatever strained liquid the boiling yields, so any surplus can be set aside.
- Keep the seeds inSlice the fruit but do not seed it. Kumquat seeds and the white pith carry most of the pectin, and they are strained out at the end anyway.
- Cook moderatelyA bare simmer for 45 minutes, not a rolling boil, which drives off liquid and turns the peel bitter. Strain through a jelly bag or double muslin and resist squeezing it if you want a clear jelly.
- Orange CuraçoaModern spelling is curaçao — an orange-peel liqueur; Grand Marnier or triple sec stands in. Five teaspoons is about 1⅔ tablespoons. The recipe adds both wine and liqueur to the strained juice and does not say when; adding them off the heat will preserve more of the flavour.
- White wineA dry to off-dry still white. With only ½ cup of sugar to 1½ cups juice this is a tart dessert by modern standards; taste before chilling and add sugar if the fruit was sharp.
- Powdered sugarIn period American usage this usually meant a finely ground sugar, not necessarily modern confectioners' sugar, though confectioners' works for the coating. Roll the syrup-cooked kumquat halves only once they are properly drained and cool, or the coating dissolves.
- YieldAbout a pint — four small moulds or glasses. Chill at least four hours, longer if gelatine is used.
Kumquats (Citrus japonica) reached Western gardens in the mid-nineteenth century, their introduction to Europe generally traced to the plant collector Robert Fortune's work in China, and by the later part of the century the fruit was being grown commercially in Florida and California. A kumquat was an ornamental, faintly exotic item, and the household cook was expected to show it off hen halhalved and sugared as a garnish. The wine and curaçao belong to the same impulse. Fashionable American dessert jellies of the period were routinely spiked with sherry, Madeira or a liqueur.