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Rhubarb Jelly
Select eight pounds of nice ripe red rhubarb, wipe the stalks, cut them into convenient lengths and put them in a stone or earthenware jar with the thinly-pared rinds of three large lemons. Cover the jar and place it in a moderate oven until the rhubarb is tender. When cooked strain the juice from the fruit into a lined saucepan, squeeze the juice of three lemons into it and boil very gently for half an hour. At the end of that time strain the juice through a jelly-bag and measure it and for every breakfast cupful allow one and one-fourth breakfast cupfuls of coarsely-crushed loaf sugar. Dissolve the sugar in the juice and boil the mixture for forty-five minutes, keeping it well stirred and skimmed all the time. Pour the jelly into jars and leave it until the following day; then put into each jar a round of paper that has been dipped in brandy and cover them with parchment, tying them down tightly. Keep the jelly in a dry store-cupboard.
A long, patient jelly of the sort made in quantity when rhubarb came in all at once. Two things decide whether it works: rhubarb has very little pectin, so the set depends on the lemon and on boiling to temperature rather than by the clock, and the acid demands non-reactive equipment throughout.
- Cook to a temperature, not to 45 minutesBoil the sweetened juice until it reaches 220F/104C, or until it sheets off a cold spoon. Depending on your pan and the water content of the stalks that may take rather less or rather more than the stated forty-five minutes, and overshooting gives a dark, caramel-flavoured jelly.
- Rhubarb is low in pectinThe lemon juice and pared rinds are doing real work here, not just flavouring, though the recipe pares the rind thinly and so takes little of the pith where most of a lemon's pectin sits; the juice is mainly supplying acid. Expect a soft set; if you want a firm jelly, add commercial pectin and follow its own timing instead.
- Non-reactive pans onlyA "lined saucepan" usually meant tin-lined copper, though enamelled pans were also sold as lined. Use stainless steel or enamel. Bare aluminium, copper or cast iron can react with the fruit and lemon acids and give a metallic taste and grey colour.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as about 350F, with 300-325F gentler and giving clearer juice. The jar is simply sweating the fruit until it collapses, which will take an hour or more for 8 lb; go by the fruit rather than the clock. Do not put a cold stoneware jar into a hot oven.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup ran roughly 8 to 10 fluid ounces and the term is not precise. What matters is the ratio: 1 1/4 measures of sugar to 1 measure of juice, using the same vessel for both.
- Loaf sugarSugar sold in a hard cone and broken up for use — ordinary granulated white sugar is the equivalent. There is no need to crush anything.
- Leaves and trimmingsUse stalks only. Rhubarb leaves are high in oxalic acid and should be discarded, not simmered for extra juice.
- Don't force the jelly bagSqueezing or pressing the bag pushes fine pulp through and clouds the jelly. Let it drip, however slow that is.
- Sealing and storageBrandy-dipped paper and tied parchment were a mould-barrier, not a seal, and a "dry store-cupboard" is not a substitute for one. Fill sterilised jars and process in a boiling-water bath per current guidance, or refrigerate and eat within a few weeks.
Rhubarb came to Europe as a medicine — the dried root of Asian species was a valued purgative long before anyone ate the stalks — and it only became a kitchen fruit once sugar was cheap enough to make its acidity palatable, which in Britain and America meant the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It earned the American nickname "pie plant" for its most common use, and the forced, pale-pink early crop from Yorkshire and from market gardens near the big cities — a British market phenomenon of the later nineteenth century — made it the first fresh "fruit" of the year. That seasonal glut is what this recipe is for: eight pounds at a time, cooked down and put by in a store-cupboard. The brandy-soaked paper laid on the surface of preserves was a widely attested household practice before reliable vacuum sealing, the alcohol discouraging the mould that would otherwise bloom under the parchment.