Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1914-09-02
Delicious Currants Now
Ready to Be Put Up

Currants, in spite of their rather
insignificant place on our bills or
fare-save in the form of jelly-are
decidedly beneficial to humanity. For
their chief constituents, potash, tar
taric acid-which give them their
sharpness-and grape sugar, all easily
digested substances, all have value.
English dieticians, especially, harp on
the health-preserving qualities OF this
small fruit.
Perhaps the reason for the limited
use of currants is that most cooks
have a limited way of preserving
them. Currant jelly, of course, Is
known in every household.
And some cooks know the delicacy
of currants chilled through, removed
from their stems, and served with an
ice-cold syrup of sugar and water
poured over them, in the French
fashion. Occasional other methods of
serving currants are rife. But, on
the whole, they are usually served in
a monotonous natural state when
they are in season and in an inces-
SAINT jelly state after their season has
gone by.
Currant jelly is not to be decried,
in spite of the fact that it Is ever
present. Here is a reliable recipe for
making it:
Mash nicely washed currants and
put them in cheesecloth bags. Hang
the bags so that the juice will strain
through and leave them hanging for
eight or ten hours, Then measure
the Juice and for every cupful allow
a cupful of graduated sugar. Heat
the sugar in a fiat pan in the oven,
but do not brown 1t or melt 1t. Boil
the clear juice for five minutes. then
4 et4, t,fi
solved Just before ii reaches the
boiling point after the sugar is added
remove from the fire and pour into
glasses that have been scalded
When the jelly is cool cover 1t well
with paraffin.
Currant ketchup suggests another
way Of preserving currants. Wash
and stem the currants, and to four
pounds of the fruit, after 1t is pre-
pared, add two pounds of brown sugar
and a pint of good cider or wine vim
egar. Simmer gently in a porcelain
pan until thick. Then add a tea
spoonful of cloves, a teaspoonful OF
ground cinnamon and the same
amount of ground pepper. Boil five
minutes, strain and bottle.
Bar lie due jelly is a delicacy we all
long for when we feel that We can
pay thirty or forty cents for what
is really little more than a mouthful
of jelly. 1t is necessarily expensive
for it is the product of very difficult
work The real bar lie due jelly is
made from large currants, from which
the seeds are pierced with a long
needle.
There are several ways of making
imitation bar lie due jelly, and the
result of these methods is good. One
is this: Boil for five minutes tive
cupfuls of sugar to three of water
or more in tn e same proportions
Measure the liquid, and when 1t Il
boiling again add an equal measure
of strained red or white currant Juice
When the mixture has cooked to thu
Jelly state, add seeded garden cur
rants-a pint of currants to a pin
of liquid. These currants should b,
opened with sharp wooden blade
and the seeds carefully removed. Boi
up once pour into jars. stand uncov
cred for six or seven days and thel
seal
A simpler method of making bar /
due is this: Crush the currants AM
strain the juice through a cheese
cloth bag. Before doing this weigl
the, currants and have ready fiv
times as many red raspberries. Fo
each pound of raspberries and cur
rant juice have ready three-quarter
of a pound of sugar. Simmer tn
sugar and currant Juice together unit
it reaches the boiling point skim an
boil gently for twenty-five minutes
Then add the raspberries, uncrusheC
and boil fifteen minutes, gently. {
until the mixture jells. Remove, pou
into glasses and seal while warm.