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Apple Jelly (II)
Miss Beaty.
Boil tart peeled apples in a little water till glutinous, strain out the juice, and put a pound of white sugar to a pint of juice. Flavour to taste; boil till a good jelly, then put into moulds.
A bare-bones jelly of the open-kettle era: apple juice, sugar, and a cook's judgment about when the boil has gone far enough. Two details need attention before you start — the fruit and the setting point.
- Use underripe, tart applesPectin and acid are both highest in fruit that is just short of ripe. Crab apples, windfalls, Bramleys or any hard tart cooker will set readily; a bag of sweet supermarket eating apples may never set at all.
- Do not peel themThe recipe says peeled, but peel and cores hold much of the pectin. Quarter the apples with skins and cores intact, cover with just enough water to float them, and simmer until collapsed and "glutinous" — the word here means thick and slippery with dissolved pectin, roughly 30 to 40 minutes.
- StrainingA jelly bag or a double layer of scalded muslin over a bowl, left to drip for several hours. Squeezing the bag gives more juice and a cloudy jelly; the choice is yours, though period jelly directions generally advise letting it drip undisturbed for a clear set.
- A pound to a pintAbout 2 cups of granulated sugar to 2 cups of juice by volume — close to equal parts, which is standard for a full-sugar jelly. "White sugar" in 1877 meant refined loaf or granulated sugar rather than the cheaper brown; ordinary granulated is the equivalent.
- When it is "a good jelly"This is the hinge. Boil hard and test at 220F/104C on a thermometer, or lift the spoon and watch the last drops slide together into a sheet rather than dripping singly. Typically 10 to 20 minutes of vigorous boiling after the sugar dissolves; overshooting gives a stiff, caramel-tinged jelly.
- FlavouringApple takes lemon juice or zest, a stick of cinnamon or a few cloves in the boil, or a spoonful of rose water off the heat. Add lemon juice early — it helps the set as well as the flavour.
- Moulds, and keepingPoured into wetted moulds this sets as a firm dessert jelly to be turned out and eaten within a few days, refrigerated. If you want it to keep on a shelf, use hot sterilised jars and a current tested water-bath procedure, which this recipe does not supply.
- YieldYields vary with how much water is used and how hard the pulp is drained; a few pounds of apples will give at least a pint of juice, and a pint of juice with its sugar makes something over a pint of finished jelly — two small moulds or two half-pint jars.
Apple jelly was the thrift preserve of the nineteenth-century kitchen: it used peelings, cores, windfalls and crab apples that were too sour or too small for anything else, and it needed nothing but sugar because the fruit brought its own setting power. Commercial pectin did not reach home cooks until the twentieth century, so a cook judged the boil by eye and by the behaviour of the drip from a spoon — which is why this recipe gives no times at all. The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) was compiled from contributions by named local women, and the "Miss Beaty" attribution here is typical: these community cookbooks were assembled by church and charitable committees and sold to raise funds, with each donor's name attached to her receipt. The presence of two apple jellies in one book, this being the second, suggests how routine the preserve was in an Ontario household with an orchard.