Blackberry Jelly

Blackberry Jelly, this time, from The Improved Housewife (1845, 20th ed 1855)

 

Very visually interesting blackberry jelly.

My plan is to use it for creams or molded jellies later this year, as described in Beeton's. I wouldn't have bothered with jelly otherwise: jam is much easier to make, yields more per pound fruit, and tastes the same on scones. However, the seeds and pulp would be a problem in a jelly mold, and I had another large haul of blackberries, so jelly it was.

For this pint, I used about 3 lbs of blackberries. I put the berries though through the food mill, and then strained the juice through a cloth, but some seeds seem to have gotten around the edges. Fortunately, most of the seeds stayed in the fibrous pulp in the first place, so the jelly's relatively clear.

Per the receipt, I added 1 lb of sugar to the pint of juice successfully collected, brought it to a boil with a partial egg white (aiming for 1/3 per the recipe ratio, but this was pure estimation), took it off the heat to skim the resulting foam (some of which even adhered to the egg white), and brought back to a boil. After a second skim, I transferred the jelly to a clean pint jar and processed for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath.

After making so much jam, the yield was a bit of a disappointment, though that's entirely on me. If this works out well for a molded jelly or cream, I'll likely make more jellies next year for the same reason. If not, I'll probably stick to jams for the bulk of my fruit preserves, as they are much less work and leave me with fewer dishes to wash.