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Cranberry Jelly
Wash a quantity of cranberries thoroughly. Measure them, and to every quart add one pound of sugar and one breakfast cupful of water. Put this in a preserving-pan, and place it on the side of the fire to simmer for half an hour. Then pass the jelly through a strainer, and when quite cool put it into pots ready for use.
A four-line jelly that depends entirely on the cranberry's own pectin and acid. The measurements are by volume of whole fruit, which is less precise than it sounds but works because cranberries are forgiving.
- A quart of cranberriesMeasured whole and loose, a quart is about 4 cups, or roughly a pound — near enough to one standard 12 oz bag plus a handful. Sugar and fruit are therefore close to equal by weight, which is on the sweet side of modern taste.
- A breakfast cupfulThe breakfast cup was a large Victorian cup size, usually reckoned at 8 to 10 fluid ounces. Anything in that range will do here; the water only needs to keep the fruit from catching before it releases its own juice.
- Preserving-panA wide, heavy, non-reactive pan. Avoid bare aluminium or cast iron: cranberries are acidic enough to pick up a metallic taste and a dull colour.
- On the side of the fireThe cool edge of a coal range, meaning a bare simmer rather than a boil. On a modern hob, low heat with the surface just moving.
- Half an hour is longThe berries themselves burst and collapse within about ten minutes. The remaining twenty are working the sugar syrup toward setting point, so stir now and then and watch for scorching once the mixture thickens.
- Strainer, not jelly bagPassing the hot pulp through a sieve gives a smooth, opaque jelly closer to what is now sold as jellied cranberry sauce. For a clear jelly you would need to drip the juice through cloth without pressing, which this recipe does not ask for.
- The setCranberries are high in both pectin and acid, so no added pectin is needed. If a spoonful chilled on a cold saucer wrinkles when pushed, it is done; if it stays syrupy, simmer a few minutes more.
- Pots and storageNo sealing or processing is described, so treat this as a fresh preserve: cover, cool, and keep it in the refrigerator, where it will hold a couple of weeks. For shelf storage, follow a current tested canning procedure.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Expect at least a pint of strained jelly from a quart of berries, to serve alongside roast turkey or game.
Cranberry sauce and jelly were fixtures of the American table long before Oscar Tschirky put this version in print, the fruit being one of the few native North American berries to enter commercial cultivation, chiefly in the Massachusetts and New Jersey bogs, during the nineteenth century. Its keeping quality is the point: cranberries are acidic and rich in pectin, so they set with nothing but sugar and heat, and a household could put up the autumn harvest in pots to serve with roast fowl and game through the winter. That this brief, thoroughly domestic recipe sits in a Waldorf-Astoria book is a reminder that a great hotel kitchen still ran on the same seasonal staples as a home kitchen, only in far larger quantities.