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Pie-Plant Jelly
Wash the stalks well, cut into pieces an inch long, put them into a preserving-kettle with enough water to cover them, and boil to a soft pulp; strain through a jelly-bag. To each pint of this juice add a pound of loaf-sugar; boil again, skimming often, and when it jellies on the skimmer remove it from the fire and put into jars. In making jams, the fruit should be carefully cleaned and thoroughly bruised, as mashing it before cooking prevents it from becoming hard. Boil fifteen or twenty minutes before adding the sugar, as the flavor of the fruit is thus better preserved (usually allowing three-quarters of a pound of sugar to a pound of fruit), and then boil half an hour longer. Jams require almost constant stirring, and every house-keeper should be provided with a small paddle with handle at right angles with the blade (similar to an apple-butter " stirrer," only smaller), to be used in making jams and marmalades. Jams are made from the more juicy berries, such as blackberries, currants, raspberries, strawberries, etc.; marmalades from the firmer fruits, such as pine-apples, peaches and apricots. Both require the closest attention, as the slightest degree of burning ruins the flavor. They must be boiled sufficiently, and have plenty of sugar to keep well.
To tell when any jam or marmalade is sufficiently cooked, take out some of it on a plate and let it cool. If no juice or moisture gathers about it, and it looks dry and glistening, it is done thoroughly. Put up in glass or small stone jars, and seal or secure like canned fruits or jellies. Keep jellies and jams in a cool, dry, and dark place.
"Pie-plant" is rhubarb, and the entry is really two things: a short jelly recipe followed by the book's general rules for jams and marmalades. The jelly is straightforward, but rhubarb is one of the harder fruits to set.
- Stalks onlyUse the stalks and discard the leaves entirely, along with any leaf base still attached. Rhubarb leaves are high in oxalic acid and are not food; the recipe's instruction to wash "the stalks" assumes you already know this.
- Loaf-sugarLoaf sugar was refined white sugar sold in a hard cone and broken or crushed for use. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct substitute, weight for weight: one pound is about 2 1/4 cups.
- The proportionA pint of juice to a pound of sugar is roughly 2 cups juice to 2 1/4 cups sugar, but it is what makes it keep. Reducing the sugar substantially will give you a syrup, not a jelly.
- Rhubarb sets poorlyRhubarb is acidic but low in pectin, so this is the one point where the old method often disappoints. Expect a soft set; long boiling to force a firm one will caramelise the sugar and dull the fresh flavour. Cooks who want a firm jelly usually add commercial pectin or combine the juice with apple or currant juice.
- "Jellies on the skimmer"This is the sheet test: lift the spoon, let the syrup run off, and when the last of it hangs and falls in a sheet rather than in separate drops, it is done. On a thermometer that point is 220F at sea level, a couple of degrees lower for every 1,000 feet of elevation.
- The kettleA "preserving-kettle" means a wide, heavy pan, and it should be stainless steel or enamelled rather than bare copper or aluminium, both of which react with rhubarb's acid. Width matters more than depth, since evaporation is what concentrates the jelly.
- StrainingLet the pulp drain through the jelly bag without squeezing if you want a clear jelly. Pressing pushes fibre through and clouds it; it also gains you very little juice.
- Sealing and keeping"Seal or secure like canned fruits" predates modern canning standards. For shelf storage, follow current water-bath processing directions for jellies; otherwise refrigerate the jars and use them within a month or two.
Rhubarb went by "pie-plant" through most of the nineteenth century in American cookbooks, a name that says exactly what it was for: it is generally said to have arrived in North American gardens as a medicinal plant, with the stalks becoming a kitchen crop in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries once sugar was cheap enough to make them palatable, though the story is a compressed one. Its appeal in a period household was timing. Rhubarb pushes up in early spring, weeks before any berry, so it was the first thing of the year that could be turned into pies, sauce, and preserves after a winter on stored and canned goods, which is why so many books of the era treat it as a fruit despite its being a vegetable stalk. The long passage on jams and marmalades appended here is typical of The Dixie Cook Book and its relatives, compilations that grouped a body of general instruction under whichever recipe happened to open the section.