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Fruit Jelly
Boil half a pound of apple rings in one quart of water, also four ounces of tamarinds and one pound of prunes in another saucepan with the same quantity of water. Peel and core one pound of pears, and stone one pound of dates and half a pound of raisins. When the tamarinds and prunes are tender, remove the stalks and stones, put them with their cooking liquor into a preserving-pan and add the apple rings, also their cooking liquor, together with the pears, dates and raisins; put in with the above four pounds of coarsely-crushed loaf sugar and one quart of water. Stir the whole over the fire and boil until the liquid is reduced to a thick syrup; then put in half a pound of gelatine that has been soaked in water for several hours, and continue boiling until very thick. Turn the jelly into small jars and cover them while hot.
This is not a spoonable jelly but a dense fruit paste, closer to a fruit cheese or a sliceable confection. The proportions of gelatine and sugar are both far outside modern practice and need thinking about before you start.
- The gelatine is the hingeHalf a pound is an extraordinary amount, and the gelatine of the period was less standardised than today's powder or leaf, so strength is hard to compare. Modern gelatine at that ratio gives something rubbery and cuttable rather than a preserve; if you want a jelly you can spread, start at an ounce or two of powdered gelatine for this volume and judge by a chilled saucer test.
- Prolonged boiling works against youThe instruction to add gelatine and "continue boiling until very thick" will degrade its setting power, since sustained heat breaks down the protein. The fruit and sugar should be reduced to a thick syrup first, then the soaked gelatine stirred in off the heat or over the barest heat until dissolved.
- Apple rings and loaf sugar"Apple rings" are dried apples, not fresh. Loaf sugar came as a hard refined cone that had to be broken up and crushed, which is why the recipe specifies coarsely crushed; ordinary granulated sugar is the direct replacement, weight for weight.
- TamarindFour ounces means the sticky pulp, sold now as a compressed block or as pods. Simmer, then press through a sieve to catch the fibres and the flat seeds, which the original handles by removing "stalks and stones" after cooking.
- Sugar and yieldFour pounds of sugar to roughly four pounds of fruit is a preserving ratio, not a dessert one, and the finished mass runs to something like eight or nine pounds. Halving or quartering the whole recipe is sensible unless you are filling a pantry shelf.
- VesselsA "preserving-pan" is a wide, heavy, unlined-copper or thick-bottomed pan with a large surface for evaporation. A wide Dutch oven or a large heavy sauté pan reduces the syrup far faster than a tall stockpot, and this mixture scorches easily once it thickens, so stir down to the base.
- StorageFilling hot jars and covering them is an open-kettle seal, which modern practice does not consider reliable. Gelatine adds protein and water to what is otherwise a sugar-protected preserve, so treat the result as a fresh confection: refrigerate it, or freeze it, and eat within a few weeks rather than storing it at room temperature.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 collection is largely a hotel book, but it also carries over a stratum of older domestic and quasi-medicinal preserving, and this is one of those pages. The combination of tamarind, prunes, dates, raisins and pears is often associated with the laxative fruit pastes described in nineteenth-century household manuals as a confection for the nursery or the invalid's tray, though this recipe contains no senna or other aperient; tamarind pulp is generally said to have reached Europe and America first as a pharmacy import. Setting the mass with gelatine rather than boiling it down to a stiff fruit cheese may be the hotel touch, though that reading is speculative.