No. 3668

Apple and Orange Jelly

Gelee de Pommes et Gelee d'Oranges

Cut two dozen russet apples in slices, lay them in a basin with water to cover; cook tender, then pour them on a sieve to drain off the juice, collecting it in a bowl; filter this through a flannel bag and put it into the basin again with the same weight of sugar; dissolve thoroughly, mixing together with a skimmer, then set the basin on the fire and cook until the syrup coats the spatula and falls down in beads; stir continuously with the skimmer. As soon as the liquid reaches the proper degree pour it at once into stone pots or glasses previously heated; leave to cool thoroughly. Lay on the jelly a round of paper soaked in brandy, and afterward cover the glasses with strong paper or parchment.

Orange Jelly.—Remove the peel from a few nice oranges, cut it in very thin shreds, blanch them well and then drain. Pare the oranges to the pulp. Prepare some apple jelly, as explained above, and when it is nearly cooked add to it the blanched peel and the pared oranges; mix well and when cooked pour into small jars or glasses previously heated in boiling water.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's method is sound jelly-making stripped to essentials: apples give the pectin and acid, sugar and heat do the rest. Two things carry the recipe — an honest set point and clean, hot jars.

The hinge: cook to the sheet"Coats the spatula and falls down in beads" is usually read as the sheeting test, the point at which drips run together and fall as a single curtain from the edge of a spoon. On a thermometer that is about 220F (104C) at sea level, or roughly 8F above the boiling point of water where you are. Pulled early the jelly stays syrup; pushed past it, the sugar begins to caramelize and the set turns gummy.
Basin, skimmer, stone potsThe basin is a wide preserving pan, not a mixing bowl — a broad, heavy, non-reactive pan lets water escape fast, which is what makes a bright jelly. The skimmer is a flat perforated spoon. Stone pots are glazed stoneware crocks; use canning jars.
Russets and pectinRusset apples here are the old rough-skinned russet dessert apples, firm and tart, not the American baking potato of the same name; in a New York kitchen of the 1890s that could as easily mean Roxbury or Golden Russet as an English variety. Any tart, slightly underripe apple works — Bramley, Granny Smith, crabapples, or windfalls. Include the cores and peels; that is where most of the pectin sits.
Equal weight of sugarThe sugar is matched to the weight of the strained juice, not the apples. Weigh the juice after filtering: 1 lb sugar to 1 lb juice. Weigh rather than measure by volume, since a pound of sugar takes up more room than a pound of juice.
The flannel bagA jelly bag or a double layer of dampened cheesecloth does the same work. Let it drip on its own for several hours and resist squeezing — pressed pulp clouds the finished jelly, which is the whole point of the flannel.
Yield and timingTwo dozen apples is somewhere in the region of 6-8 lb of fruit; how much juice you get depends on how much water you used to cover, but expect several jars' worth. Reckon on half an hour or so to cook the apples soft, several hours of dripping, and 20-30 minutes of boiling to the set point.
The brandy paper and the sealA round of brandy-soaked paper laid on the hot surface was the nineteenth-century defence against surface mold, with parchment tied over the rim. It works only for jars kept cold and eaten within weeks. For anything stored at room temperature, fill sterilized jars to 1/4 inch of the top and process 10 minutes in a boiling water bath.
The orange versionBlanch the shredded peel in two or three changes of boiling water to strip the bitterness, and add peel and segments only in the last few minutes so the fruit does not break up and the set is not diluted. With whole pared oranges suspended in it this is closer to a marmalade than a clear jelly.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) collects the working repertoire of Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and its preserving chapter reads like a French office kitchen rather than a farmhouse pantry — hence the paired French titles and the assumption that a cook has flannel bags and stone pots to hand. Apple jelly held a particular place in that kitchen because it is less a preserve in its own right than a base: apples are so reliably high in pectin and acid that their juice will set almost anything stirred into it, which is exactly the trick performed here with orange peel and pulp. Before commercial pectin was sold in the 1910s, this was how confectioners and chefs gave body to fruits that could not set alone, and the practice of clarifying juice through flannel to get a jewel-clear jelly was a mark of a well-run house. The brandy-soaked paper cap is older still, a standard household precaution against mold recorded in English and American receipt books throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.