Cooking a la Bettina: A Thousand Ways To Please A Husband Revisited: Chapter 29 Bettina Puts Up Fruit

Introduction

Members of the tennis club may be beating on the door, but when there’s fruit to put up Bettina will not be deterred.

“Leave ‘em till tomorrow,” entreats Alice, but clearly our heroine finds this notion impossible. Instead, the gang quickly finds itself swathed in aprons, plucking stones from cherries, and listening to Bettina give detailed instruction on the proper way to can them.

It’s not clear whether the ladies received a few jars of fruit for their labor but, given Bettina’s antiquated open kettle canning method, the next sports outing may be indefinitely postponed by a rash of stomach aches and other intestinal ills!

Part 1

The Menu

Currant Jelly

Canned Cherries

Cherry Pie Filling (1932 edition)

Preparing the Food

Currant Jelly

Making jelly (something I’ve never done before in my life) sounded daunting but, as it turned out, locating fresh currants was far more of a challenge.

In fact, it was impossible. After a bit of research I learned that currant bushes are prone to disease, and their cultivation is heavily regulated in the United States and banned outright in a number of states.

But after scouring the Internet I was able to locate a grower with currant for sale (at outrageous prices, I might add). Alas the berries would be shipped frozen rather than fresh—not exactly what I wanted but certainly better than trying to make jelly from dried fruit (good luck with that!)

So for the princely sum of $35.00 I was able to purchase three pounds. As advertised they arrived frozen thanks to chemical ice packs, layers of plastic wrapping, and a Styrofoam case—whoever packed these beauties for shipment certainly knew what s/he was doing!

Since I planned to delay the big jelly-making project until the weekend the berries went straight into the freezer—hidden in the back of course so DH and Son wouldn’t happen upon and sample them.

Come Saturday it was time to study the recipe in detail—and that’s where I hit the first snag.

Bettina’s recipe measures the ingredients in quarts and cups, and I had a devil of a time converting all that into the metric measurements stamped on the bags of currants. And it didn’t help that I had fewer currants than the recipe called for and would have to cut Bettina’s recipe down to size.

Some of my torturous calculations.

But once I got past that hurdle the jelly-making technique outlined by the recipe seemed surprisingly straightforward. Certainly the ingredients were basic: currants and sugar. Period.

Time to give it a try (Lord help my stove top if something goes wrong!)

Draining the currants.

Heating up the sugar in the oven—not sure why, but it’s is supposed to be warm when added to the currant juice.

“Mash a few [currants] with a vegetable masher in the bottom of a porcelain-lined or granite kettle. Add more currants and mash.”

The next step was to heat the mashed berries to the boiling point and cook them “until the currants appear white”.

Another problem. Although the recipe didn’t specify I was almost certain Bettina used black currants, and these were simply unavailable—fresh, frozen, or otherwise. And I was equally certain the red currants I was forced to purchase instead could boil til hell froze over without ever changing color.

Another Internet search. Fortunately I found a very good recipe for red currant jelly on Allrecipes.com and, reading over its instructions, was able to determine that the mashed currants should be boiled for ten minutes (thanks, JBORSODY!)

Time to separate the juice from the pulp—first the currents are to be put through “a coarse strainer”.

Now to strain again--fortunately I have a workable substitute for Bettina’s flannel/felt jelly bag.

Reusable mesh bags meant for storing produce in the refrigerator.

Drip, drip…this is a very slow process. The temptation to speed things along by giving the jelly bag a squeeze or two was almost overwhelming. Fortunately I knew better (squeezing the pulp makes for cloudy jelly).

A lot of pulp for such a small amount of juice (2¼ cups). I wish there was something I could make with it, but nothing comes to mind.

Juice in the pot, pulp in the trash.

After boiling the juice for ten minutes I began adding the heated sugar—2 ¼ cups, exactly how much juice I had to work with.

Normally I’d have been a little dismayed that the recipe called for so much sugar, but by this time I’d tasted the currants in their natural state and was shocked by their sour power—two+ cups of sugar might not even be enough!

After the juice and sugar had boiled for some time I began testing it with my candy thermometer. But, to make doubly certain the stuff was neither over- nor underdone, I also used the old-fashioned sheeting test: let some of the syrup drip off a teaspoon—if it comes off in sheets it’s finished.

As the jelly was to be stored in the refrigerator I didn’t bother to sterilize the jars, lids, or utensils. I did, however, put the jar to be filled in a pan of simmering water (as Bettina suggests). This isn’t meant to sterilize them, of course, but rather to keep the jar(s) from cracking as the hot jelly is poured in.

Looks so perfect I’m almost afraid to taste it!

Canned Cherries

Compared to the jelly this recipe should have been a breeze. Unfortunately, I had exactly the same trouble: a complete lack of fruit--in this case because cherry season was long past. Fresh cherries were simply not available, so I had no choice but to use frozen. I also cut Bettina’s recipe down to a single jar.

As with the jelly, the list of ingredients is simple: fruit, sugar, and water.

Mix the sugar with the water and heat the mixture up.

Then add the cherries.

These things are huge—easily the largest cherries I’ve ever seen!

Now bring the mixture to a boil and cook for ten minutes.

Once again this stuff’s ultimate resting place is the refrigerator, so there was no need to sterilize the jars or equipment.

But I did heat the jar in simmering water before filling them.

And, as I had a funnel on hand, I got the cherry juice into the jar with minimal mess (the cherries I just spooned from pot to jar)

Well, these look like bottled cherries…

Cherry Pie Filling

It would have been logical to use the above bottled cherries for the pie, but Bettina calls for fresh—and those were certainly not available. Frozen cherries of course were—but I knew from experience that frozen sweet Bings from the supermarket don’t make a very good pie.

Hence—

bottled sour cherries (product of Germany).

As the cherries were bottled in a very light syrup they require a lot of draining.

Flour and lard for the pie crust—this certainly isn’t for carb-counters!

Salt

Ye Olde Pastry Cutter—low-tech, but possibly my favorite kitchen gadget.

I covered this wooden board with parchment paper to roll out the crust on.

Happily I found a good website (sallysbakingaddiction.com) with explicit directions for making pie crust and (best of all) pictures showing what the crust is supposed to look like at each stage.

Sally says to cut the fat into the flour thoroughly but not to worry if a few larger clumps remain. Thank you, Sally, for not requiring me to pulverize the stuff!