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Apple Jelly (III)
Mrs. N. P. Inglehart.
Take juicy apples, (Ramboes, if possible); take the stems and tops off, and wash them nicely, then cut up into quarters and put cold water upon them, just enough to cover them; boil them soft, afterward strain them through a jelly bag; then take two pints at a time with two pounds of crushed sugar; boil twenty minutes, then do the same with the other juice; to be economical, pare and core the apples; don't strain so close, but that you can, by adding a little more water, use the apples for sauce or pies.
A straightforward pectin-and-sugar jelly from an era before commercial pectin, when the fruit had to supply its own set. The whole recipe hinges on working in small batches, which is why Mrs. Inglehart tells you to boil two pints of juice at a time rather than the whole lot.
- RamboesThe Rambo is an old American apple, thin-skinned, juicy and tender, more mildly subacid than sharply tart. Any tart, firm apple high in pectin will do the same work: Granny Smith, Bramley, crab apples, or windfall apples still slightly underripe. Avoid sweet dessert apples, which are low in both acid and pectin and will not set.
- Leave the cores inThe pectin is concentrated in the cores, seeds and skins. Boiling whole quarters unpared gives the firmer set; the "economical" variation at the end, where you pare and core first and keep the pulp for sauce, gives a weaker juice and a softer jelly. Choose one aim or the other.
- ProportionsTwo pints of strained juice to two pounds of crushed sugar is roughly 4 cups juice to 4 1/2 cups granulated sugar. "Crushed sugar" meant loaf sugar broken down, not a special grade; ordinary white sugar is the equivalent.
- Two pints at a timeThis is the instruction that matters. A shallow, small batch reaches setting point in roughly the twenty minutes given; double or triple it in one pot and the juice must boil considerably longer, darkening the colour and overcooking the set. Repeat batches rather than scaling up.
- Test rather than timeTwenty minutes is a guide, not a rule, since it depends on your pan and your fruit. Setting point is 220F (105C) at sea level, or when a spoonful wrinkles on a cold saucer.
- The jelly bagA scalded flour-sack towel or several layers of butter muslin in a colander does the job. Let it drip on its own; squeezing gives a cloudy jelly. The recipe's "don't strain so close" is about leaving enough juice in the pulp to use it for sauce or pies, not about clarity.
- Yield and keepingThe recipe gives no yield; a two-pint batch will fill several half-pint jars. It gives no sealing method either; jelly of this period was commonly poured hot and sealed with wax or paper covers. Refrigerate the filled jars and use within a few weeks, or follow current water-bath canning directions if you want them shelf-stable.
The Home Cook Book (Chicago, first published 1874, with later printings through the 1870s) was compiled from contributed receipts by the ladies of Chicago and sold for the benefit of the Home for the Friendless, which explains why the same dish appears three or four times over with a different subscriber's name on each. Apple jelly was a staple of that kind of book because apples were the one fruit almost every household had in quantity in autumn, and because they set without help: commercial bottled pectin did not reach American kitchens until the 1910s, so a nineteenth-century cook chose her apple variety for its jellying power the way a modern cook reaches for a packet. The Rambo, whose name is often traced to the Swedish Rambo family who settled on the Delaware in the seventeenth century, though the derivation is contested and has also been linked to the French Rambour, was widely grown in the Midwest at this date and is now largely confined to heritage orchards. The closing note about reusing the strained pulp for sauce or pies is the real signature of the period, and of a charity cookbook in particular: nothing edible left the kitchen unaccounted for.