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Currant Jelly
Do not pick from the stem, but carefully remove all leaves and imperfect fruit, place in a stone jar, and follow general directions; or place one pint currants, picked off the stem, and one pint sugar, in the kettle on the stove, scald well, skim out currants, and dry on plates; or make into jam with one-third currants and two-thirds raspberries, straining juice after sweetening, and cooking until it "jellies." After currants are dried put them in stone jars and cover closely.-Mrs. A. B. M.
Three variants are packed into one paragraph here: a straight jelly that defers to the book's "general directions," a sugared dried currant, and a currant-raspberry jam. Read it as a set of options rather than one procedure.
- The missing method"Follow general directions" points to the book's standard jelly instructions elsewhere, which for this period typically meant heating the fruit until the juice runs, straining it through a flannel or jelly bag, then boiling the juice with sugar. Nothing in this entry gives quantities for that version, so use a current jelly ratio for a pint of strained juice.
- Why the stems stay onStripping currants bruises them and costs juice. Since the juice is strained anyway, stems do no harm, and slightly underripe fruit carries extra pectin, which is why this jelly sets without commercial pectin.
- Do not squeeze the bagCurrants are high in both pectin and acid, so a set is nearly guaranteed; clarity is the only thing at risk. Let the bag drip and resist wringing it, or the jelly turns cloudy.
- "Jellies" means 220FThe jelly point is 8F above the boiling point of water, about 220F at sea level, or when the syrup sheets off a cold spoon in a curtain rather than dripping. Currant juice usually reaches it in under ten minutes of hard boiling — long cooking dulls the colour and can break the pectin down.
- The dried-currant variantScalding a pint of currants with a pint of sugar and drying them on plates produces candied fruit, not a preserve. The book says only to dry them on plates; a very low oven or a dehydrator will do the same, until tacky rather than wet. The stone jar "covered closely" was meant to keep them from reabsorbing moisture.
- The jam variantOne-third currants to two-thirds raspberries is a sound ratio — the currants supply the pectin the raspberries lack. Straining after sweetening removes the raspberry seeds; skip the straining if you want a rustic jam.
- SealingNineteenth-century jelly was poured into stone or glass jars and sealed with paraffin or a paper cover, which invites surface mould over months. Fill hot sterilised jars and process in a boiling-water bath, or refrigerate and treat as a short-keeping preserve.
- YieldYields vary with ripeness and how hard the fruit is pressed; expect roughly two to three cups of juice from two pounds of currants, and two to three half-pint jars of jelly.
Red currants (Ribes rubrum) were a fixture of American kitchen gardens through the nineteenth century, valued precisely because their juice sets reliably — currant jelly was often said to be the household benchmark against which other jellies were judged, and the standard accompaniment to mutton, venison and game. The Dixie Cook Book, assembled in the 1880s from contributions signed with initials like "Mrs. A. B. M.," reflects that domestic economy: the entry offers three ways to use one glut of fruit, including drying the scalded berries as a sweetmeat so nothing from the boiling is wasted. Currants largely disappeared from American cooking in the following century, after states began restricting Ribes cultivation because the plants host white pine blister rust — a ban long since relaxed in most places, though the habit of eating currants never fully returned.