Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Black Currant Jelly
Black Currant Jelly
Pick the currants and pass them through a cane sieve, thus obtaining all the juice. Put the juice in a preserving-pan, boil it up, and then strain it through a fine hair-sieve. Weigh, return it to the preserving-pan, and for every three pounds of currants put in two and a half pounds of sugar that has been boiled down to a strong blow degree; skim the liquor and boil quickly till reduced to a jelly that will drop from the spoon in a kind of congealed state, then turn it into small glass jars. Cut some round pieces of white paper that will fit inside the jars, dip them in brandy and lay one carefully in each. Soak some bullock's bladder in water until it becomes elastic and can be easily stretched, then fit a small piece of it tightly over each jar, and tie firmly around the edges with strong twine. Keep the jars of jelly in a dry cupboard till wanted.
A straightforward high-pectin jelly buried under two obsolete pieces of equipment: a sugar boiled to a stage named by eye, and a seal made from animal membrane. The fruit does most of the work.
- The hinge: stop at the set, not past itBlack currants are among the highest-pectin, highest-acid fruits in the kitchen, so the jelly sets fast and hard. Boil to 220F (about 8F above the boil, at sea level) or until a spoonful wrinkles on a chilled saucer, then pull it off; another two minutes gives you a rubbery, caramel-tasting block.
- "Strong blow degree"An old sugar-boiling stage judged by blowing through a skimmer dipped in the syrup and watching bubbles detach. It corresponds to roughly 235-240F on a thermometer. Since the sugar is going straight into hot juice to be boiled again, dissolving it in the juice and taking the whole to setting point gives the same result.
- The proportions are ambiguousYou are told to weigh the strained juice, then to use two and a half pounds of sugar "for every three pounds of currants" -- two different things measured. Read it as juice: about 13 oz sugar per pound of juice, which is on the lean side and depends on the fruit setting hard, as black currants do.
- Cane and hair sievesA cane sieve is a coarse woven basket strainer for crushing the fruit through; a hair sieve is a fine one of woven horsehair. A food mill or coarse mesh strainer followed by a fine mesh strainer or a jelly bag does both jobs. Do not squeeze the bag if you want a clear jelly.
- The brandy paper and the bladderA spirit-soaked disc laid on the hot surface suppressed surface mould; soaked bullock's bladder shrank tight as it dried and formed a hard seal. Neither is available or reliable now. Use standard two-piece canning lids and a boiling-water bath, or refrigerate the filled jars and treat them as a fresh preserve.
- Storage as writtenThe "dry cupboard" only worked because the seal was tight and the sugar high. Any jar sealed by paper, wax or membrane rather than a proper vacuum will eventually grow surface mould, and there is no way to see it through a membrane cover.
- YieldThree pounds of currants give roughly two pounds of strained juice; how many 8-oz jars you end with depends on how far the jelly is reduced.
Black currants were a British and northern European hedgerow and kitchen-garden staple: too sharp to eat raw, but so rich in pectin and acid that they set into jelly with almost no coaxing, and so strongly flavoured that a spoonful was used for a sore throat or, as cassis, to scent a glass of wine. The technique described here -- juice, weighed sugar boiled to a named stage, brandied paper, a bladder cover -- follows long-established English and French confectionery practice. Black currants host white pine blister rust, and cultivation was restricted by federal and state law in the early twentieth century, which is why a jelly ordinary enough for a nineteenth-century hotel kitchen reads as exotic in the United States today.