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Grape Jelly
Remove the stems and put the grapes into a large stone jar, stand the jar in a saucepan of warm water over the fire, let the water come gradually to the boil and keep it boiling until the juice flows freely from the fruit, stirring it now and then with a wooden spoon. When the juice is out of the skins, empty the jar into a jelly-bag and let the juice drip through without squeezing the bag. To every quart of juice add a pound and a half of loaf sugar, broken small, and let it dissolve in the juice; then put it over the fire in a preserving-pan, and boil until clear, skimming off all scum as it rises. Take from the fire, let it cool a little, and put into jars and cover air-tight.
A straightforward long-boil jelly from the era before commercial pectin, when the set depended entirely on the fruit itself. Two things decide whether it works: the ripeness of the grapes and how well you judge the setting point.
- Use some underripe fruitFully ripe grapes are low in pectin and acid, and a jelly made from them alone will stay syrupy. Traditional practice is to include roughly a quarter underripe grapes, or to add the juice of a lemon per quart, to guarantee a set. Slip-skin varieties such as Concord are the usual choice.
- The stone jar is a double boilerStanding a crock in a pan of water and bringing it to the boil is simply gentle indirect heat, which keeps the fruit from scorching and stops the juice tasting cooked. A heavy stainless or enamelled pan over low direct heat does the same job in less time; crush the grapes first and give them 10 to 15 minutes until the skins have released their colour.
- Do not squeeze the bagThis is the hinge of the recipe. Pressing the pulp forces sediment through and produces cloudy jelly that no amount of skimming will clear. Let it drip for several hours or overnight, and accept the lower yield.
- Sugar quantitiesA pound and a half of sugar to a quart of juice is roughly 3 1/3 cups of sugar to 4 cups of juice, close to the usual long-boil jelly ratio. Loaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a solid cone and broken up for use; ordinary granulated sugar is the modern equivalent, weight for weight.
- "Boil until clear" means the setting pointLook for 220F on a thermometer, or 8F above the boiling point of water where you live. Failing that, use the sheet test: jelly run off a cold metal spoon should fall in a single curtain rather than separate drops.
- Tartrate crystalsGrape juice throws gritty crystals of cream of tartar. Refrigerating the strained juice overnight and pouring it off the sediment before adding sugar prevents crunchy jelly.
- Sealing"Cover air-tight" would most likely have meant paraffin wax or a tied bladder, both of which are now discouraged because wax cracks and admits mould. Ladle into hot sterilised jars leaving a quarter-inch headspace and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes, or simply keep the jelly in the refrigerator and use it within a couple of months.
- YieldRoughly 4 lb of grapes will give something like a quart of juice when left to drip unsqueezed, which with the sugar here should make about four half-pint jars.
Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born ma tre d'h tel who ran the Waldorf's dining rooms from 1893 and put his name to this 1896 volume, filled the book out with plenty of domestic preserving alongside the hotel cookery, and grape jelly was one of the most ordinary things an American household made in autumn. The method here is pre-commercial-pectin: the fruit's own pectin and acid do all the work, which is why the instructions dwell on gentle extraction and a long clarifying boil rather than on any additive. Bottled and powdered pectin only reached home kitchens in the 1910s and 1920s, after which jelly recipes shortened dramatically. The insistence on never squeezing the jelly bag is a nineteenth-century point of pride clear, jewel-bright jelly held up to the light was the mark of a careful preserver, and cloudiness was read as carelessness.