Putting Food By - Janet Greene [131]
Group I. These fruits, if not overripe, usually contain enough natural pectin and acid to gel with only added sugar: apples (sour), blackberries (sour), crabapples, cranberries, currants, gooseberries, grapes (Eastern Concord), lemons, loganberries, plums (except Italian), quinces.
Group II. These fruits usually are low in natural acid or pectin, and may need added acid or pectin: apples (ripe), blackberries (ripe), cherries (sour), chokecherries, elderberries, grapefruit, bottled grape juice (Eastern Concord, lower than Group I because of previous processing to preserve it), grapes (California), loquats, oranges.
Group III. These fruits always need added acid or pectin, or both: apricots, figs, grapes (Western Concord), guavas, peaches, pears, prunes (Italian), raspberries, strawberries.
Steps in Making Cooked Jelly
The recipes that follow are for cooked jellies—that is, ones boiled with sugar and pectin as indicated. (Uncooked jellies are discussed later.)
Always work with the recommended batch. The quantities given are tailored for success: the longer boiling needed for larger amounts can zap the effectiveness of the pectin and the result will be runny and sad.
Preparing Fruit and Extracting Juice
A rough—very rough—rule of thumb for estimating how much fruit will be needed to make a particular batch of jelly is: 1 pound of prepared fruit (i.e., washed, stemmed/trimmed/cut as the recipe says to) will make 1 cup of juice.
Plan to process the fruit as soon as possible after it’s picked or bought; refrigerate, for no more than 1 day, soft fruits and berries if you can’t handle them right away. When you do start, keep at it and work right along.
Pick over the fruit carefully, discarding any that is overripe or has rotten spots. For a successful gel from recipes that have no pectin added, make up the amount called for with one-fourth the total in underripe fruit.
Wash the fruit quickly but thoroughly. Don’t let it soak; lift it out of the basin of fresh water, don’t pour it with the water into a strainer. The lighter and quicker you are in handling berries, the better. And always use good, clean drinking water for washing your fruit.
Remove the stems and blossom ends of apples and quinces and guavas, but retain their skins and cores. The skins of plums and grapes also contain a good deal of pectin, so keep them too. The stems and pits of cherries and berries need not be removed: the jelly bag will take care of them when the pulp is strained.
TO EXTRACT JUICE
Sparkling clear, firm jelly calls for carefully strained juice. Modern recipes describe the way the juice is to be extracted—simply by crushing; or by short heating, with or without “enough water to keep from sticking”; or by longer cooking with more water added—and these instructions should be followed.
Sometimes, though, you will like the sound of an older recipe that’s not explicit about method, so we offer the following ideas as a help in figuring out what to do.
Always start heating the fruit at a fairly high temperature.
To heat ripe soft berries without any water, crush a layer in the bottom of the kettle to start the juice (mashing them with the bottom of a drinking glass, or with a pastry-blender); pile on the remainder and put the kettle on fairly high heat, stirring to mix the contents; reduce heat to moderate and boil gently and stir until all the fruit is soft—5 to 10 minutes.
To heat soft berries that are slightly underripe, Concord and wild grapes, or currants, add no more than ¼ cup water to each 1 cup of prepared fruit. With currants, cook until they are translucent and faded. Add ½ cup of water to chokecherries and wild cherries; add a scant ¼ cup to juicy sour cherries.
To cut-up (but unpitted) plums, add water to just below the top layer in the kettle, and cook until soft—about 15 minutes.
To prepared apples, crabapples, quinces, and guavas, add water just to cover, and cook until soft—20 to 25 minutes.
Strain all crushed raw or cooked fruit through a jelly bag that holds at least 6 cups of simmered fruit. Dampen