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Dessert

Elderberry Jelly

A preserve made from elderberries and cane caster sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Elderberry Jelly

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Strip the berries from their stalks and stir them in a pot with a wooden spoon until the juice flows freely.

  2. Strain the juice thoroughly without touching the jelly bag to keep it clear.

Make the jelly

  1. Weigh the juice and boil it sharply for 15 to 20 minutes.

  2. Off the heat, add 14 oz of cane caster sugar for every pint of juice.

  3. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes, stirring and skimming until it jellies.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Elderberries
Provide the juice and natural pectin and acidity that help the jelly set.
Cane caster sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, with boiling, helps it set into a firm gel.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar mixture until it jellies. Sugar and pectin only form a gel at a high enough concentration. Undercooking leaves the jelly runny, while overcooking can make it stiff or dull in colour, so the set must be tested rather than judged by time alone.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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