Grape Jelly

Grape Jelly.—This can be made precisely like every other jelly, i.e., the juice extracted, strained, weighed, and cooked with an equal weight of sugar, a particularly fine jelly being made with either ripe purple or green Muscat grapes, these last being perfectly ripe. The unripe grapes obtained when the vines are thinned are also capable of producing jelly in the same way, with the addition of just not enough water to cover them, when first put into the preserving pan. Finish as for rowan jelly. But the best way of using these unripe grapes is as a mar-malade. For this, put six pounds of the thinned out grapes into a saucepanful of boiling water, and as soon as they begin to swell, lift them off, add a little lemon juice and let them stand by the fire till quite green. Now turn them into an earthenware basin, and leave them till cool. When nearly cold rub them through a sieve and dry this purée over the fire. Then stir to it five pounds of cane sugar boiled to the crack, return it all to the fire, and cook till it will set nicely, when it is potted and covered down. Barberries, green apricots, and unripe windfalls can all be preserved in this way. A rougher and readier plan is to well wash the thinned grapes, then rinse them in fresh cold water, drain them lightly but do not dry them, and lay them in the preserving pan with an equal weight of sugar, and cook in the usual way, being very particular in the skimming, to remove all the seeds sent to the surface by the boiling.