No. 3670

Currant Jelly and Plain Currant Jelly; Cranberry Jelly

Gelee de Groseille et Gelee de Groseille Simple; Gelee de Canneberges

Have one pound of currants free of stalks and one pound of powdered sugar; mix both together in a vessel without crusting the currants; when the sugar is dissolved pour the whole into a copper pan and stand it on the fire; after it has been boiling for five or six minutes the syrup will have cooked to the proper degree, that is, until it coats the skimmer and drops from it in beads. Now pour the fruit and syrup on to a sieve laid over a vessel fit to receive the liquid, and use this to fill jelly glasses; keep slightly warm for two hours, then leave to cool before covering the glasses with paper.

Another way is to select the currants when not too ripe; pick off all the stalks and put the fruit in a copper pan with three-quarters of their weight of powdered sugar; when this is partly melted stand the pan on a slow fire to bring the liquid to a boil while skimming; boil it once or twice only; skim well, strain through a napkin and pour into jelly glasses.

Plain.—Slightly cook ten pounds of currants with their stalks in a copper pan; pass them through a sieve having sufficiently fine meshes to prevent the seeds from passing; mix an equal weight of sugar to this juice; cook until it coats the skimmer and drops from it in beads, being careful to skim during the whole process of cooking. Fill some heated glasses or jars, and when cold cover with a round of paper soaked in brandy, then cover the top of the vessel with strong paper.

Cranberry Jelly.—Crush about two pounds of very ripe cranberries, dilute with a little water and strain the juice through a jelly bag. Pour this juice into an untinned copper pan and add a pound of sugar to each pint of liquid; let it cook on a good fire to the consistency of a jelly, following the directions found in No. 3668. As soon as it is finished pour it into small pots or glasses and leave to cool off. When the jelly is perfectly cold cover with round pieces of paper dipped in brandy, and cork up the pots or glasses to close them hermetically.

← No. 3669 Cherry Jelly with Kirsch Preserves & Conserves No. 3671 Currant Jelly and Currant Jelly with Apples →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Three related jellies from Ranhofer's preserving chapter, written for a professional pastry kitchen of the 1890s. Two features of the method put it outside modern practice, and they are worth understanding before reading the rest as a historical document.

Untinned copper and acid fruitThe cranberry jelly specifically calls for an untinned copper pan, and the currant recipes call simply for a copper pan without saying whether it is lined. Currant and cranberry juice are strongly acidic, and prolonged boiling in bare copper can dissolve copper salts into the fruit; that is a route to copper poisoning and a reason lined or stainless preserving pans replaced it.
The brandy paper sealA round of paper soaked in brandy laid on the surface, with stout paper tied over the top, was the standard closure of the period. It is not a hermetic seal despite the text's claim, and it relies on a surface layer of alcohol and a very high sugar concentration to hold off mould. Modern preserving uses a measured water-bath process and tested headspace; a current tested recipe should be used instead.
What "coats the skimmer and drops in beads" meansThis is the old visual test for the jelly point: syrup running off the skimmer stops falling in a stream and hangs in heavy separate drops. It corresponds roughly to what modern jelly-making calls the sheeting stage, but it is a judgement call rather than a measurement, which is part of why the method is not easily repeatable at home.
Powdered sugarIn this period powdered sugar generally meant finely ground granulated sugar rather than the confectioners' sugar sold today, which contains cornstarch as an anti-caking agent; substituting the modern product could cloud the jelly.
Currants here are red currantsGroseille means the fresh red currant, not the dried Zante currant of baking. Red currants are unusually high in pectin and acid, which is why so short a boil sets them; dried currants would do nothing of the kind.
ScaleThe plain version starts from ten pounds of currants with the stalks left on, cooked down and sieved. That is a commercial batch for a hotel larder, not a domestic one, and the yield depends entirely on how much juice the fruit gives up.
Cranberries and pectinCranberries are also pectin-rich and acidic, which is why Ranhofer treats them exactly like currants and gives no added setting agent. The ratio here is a pound of sugar to each pint of strained juice.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's summary of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its preserving chapter reads like a stock list for a restaurant that had to produce currant jelly on demand all winter. Red currant jelly was not chiefly a breakfast spread in that kitchen: it was a working sauce component, served with venison, hare, mutton and game birds, and the base, with port and citrus, of a cold Cumberland sauce. The inclusion of cranberry jelly alongside it is a distinctly American note in an otherwise French book, and Ranhofer handles the native fruit by simply pointing it at the same method, which works because cranberries share the currant's high acid and high pectin. The untinned copper pan he specifies was standard confectioners' equipment of the period; the practice was already being criticised by public-health writers in the same decades, though untinned copper jam pans are still made and used.