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Mint Jelly
Make either crab apple or green grape jelly, according to previous recipes, adding to the boiling mixture at the last moment several bruised mint leaves. Color with a little green vegetable coloring. If preferred, instead of adding the bruised mint when the jelly is in the glass, place two mint leaves in the top of each glass before pouring on the paraffine. This jelly takes the place of mint sauce and is very delicate.
A variation rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you already have a batch of crab apple or green grape jelly at the setting point. Everything here hinges on when the mint goes in.
- Add the mint at the very endMint's aromatic oils are volatile and turn grassy and bitter with prolonged boiling. Bruise the leaves, stir them into the jelly off the heat or in the last seconds of the boil, then strain them out before filling the jars.
- How much mintThe original says only "several" leaves and gives no batch size. For a batch made from about 4 cups of juice, roughly a loosely packed half cup of leaves, left in only briefly, should give a clear mint flavour without medicinal harshness; adjust to taste.
- Why crab apple or green grapeBoth are high in natural pectin and acid and will set without commercial pectin, which may be why the book names them. Underripe green grapes were a common early-season jelly fruit. A modern tested apple or grape jelly recipe behaves the same way here.
- Green vegetable coloringPeriod colourings could be spinach juice or a bottled liquid dye. A few drops of modern green food colouring does the same job; the jelly will otherwise be pink-amber from crab apple or pale gold from grape.
- Leaves left in the glassThe alternative of laying two leaves on top before sealing is decorative and will continue to leach flavour and colour. It also gives mould something to grow on in a jar that is not properly processed.
- Paraffine is obsoleteSealing jelly under a layer of melted paraffin wax was standard practice at the time and is no longer recommended: the wax shrinks and cracks, admitting mould and yeast. Use standard canning jars, two-piece lids and a boiling-water bath per current tested times, or keep the jelly in the refrigerator and use it within a few weeks.
- Yield and servingThe original gives no quantities; a batch from about 4 cups of juice would fill roughly four to five half-pint glasses. It was meant for roast lamb or mutton in place of mint sauce, and it also suits cold ham and a cheese board.
Mint sauce -- chopped mint steeped in vinegar and sugar -- had been the English accompaniment to roast lamb for well over a century by the time the Butterick Publishing Company issued this book in 1911, and mint jelly is essentially that sauce set with fruit pectin so it could be canned in summer and spooned out in a neat quivering cube at table. The shift matters: a jelly keeps on the shelf, looks well in a cut-glass dish, and belongs to the same American impulse toward putting up and presentation that fills the rest of this Canning and Preserving section. Crab apple and green grape both happen to be tart and pectin-rich enough to set on their own before packaged pectin was widely sold. The bright green colour, which nothing in the fruit provides, was added deliberately.