Cranberry Jelly.
Wash and pick over the fruit carefully, and boil it till very soft in water enough to cover it. Then strain it through a hair sieve, and weigh equal quantities of the pulp and fine sugar. Boil it gently, and with care that it does not burn, fifteen or twenty minutes.
Currant Jelly.
Pick over the fruit, but leave it on the stems. Put it into the preserving kettle, and break it with a ladle or spoon, and when it is hot, squeeze it in a coarse linen bag until you can press out no more juice. Then weigh a pound of sugar to a pint of juice. Sift the sugar, and heat it as hot as possible without dissolving or burning; boil the juice five minutes very fast, and while boiling add the hot sugar, stir it well, and when it has boiled again five minutes, set it off. The time must be strictly observed. Jelly to eat with meat does very well made with brown sugar, but must boil longer.
Another (without boiling).
Squeeze the currants in a coarse linen cloth, without taking off the stems. Weigh the juice, and allow a pound for a pound. The sugar should be sifted, and stirred in with the hand until it feels smooth and well dissolved. Put it into glasses, and set them in the sun near a window for two or three days. Then cover as directed for preserves and jellies. This will taste like newly made currant jelly at the end of a year, if kept in a cool and dry place. It will not keep well in a damp house.
Quince Jelly.
Take the water in which quinces have been boiled for preserving and for marmalade, and boil the clean parings until they are soft. (See directions in the [receipt] for preserving quinces without boiling the syrup). Then strain the water while very hot through a flannel bag, and allow a pound of best sugar for every pint. Put the sugar on a dish into the stove oven to heat; boil up the quince water; if any scum rises, take it off, and then stir in the hot sugar, and boil it slowly, but steadily, twenty minutes, or half an hour. The time necessary will depend somewhat on the water being more or less strongly flavored with the fruit.
To Preserve Fruit in Water.
Pick the fruit when ripe, but not mellow; put it into strong glass bottles, with wide mouths; fill them with cold water, cork them and tie down the corks, or cover them with a piece of bladder wet in warm water, and tied over close; then set them into a flat-bottomed wash-boiler with a little hay under them, and cold water enough to come half-way up the sides of the bottles. Then heat the water gradually, and while that is doing melt some bees-wax and rosin, in equal quantities, and have it ready to use when the bottles are taken out of the boiler. This must be done as soon as the water in it begins to boil. Shut all the doors and windows before you do it, for a draught of air will break the bottles. Throw a cloth over them till they are a little cooled.