Old Southern Lemon Jelly

by Hugh Acheson
on 10/31/13 at 12:00 PM

When you stick a capital "S" on "outhern", it always means the Southeastern USA, even in a book about marmalade written and published in the UK. It is a great read on the history and meandering path of marmalade but it really got me thinking about how bitterness in food is loved in some food cultures and abhorred in others. We, in the South, are torn: The South likes their jellies and jams sweet and real marmalade has never been that popular, but then again we adore our chicories and pokeweed, dandelions, the bitter greens with a deep kinship to Italian greens.

In C. Anne Wilson's The Book of Marmalade there is no Southern marmalade recipe, but there is a very simple lemon jelly that I thought I would try out. So simple, maybe too simple: 

"Old Southern Lemon Jelly (US)

The juice and grated rinds of 4 lemons; 1 lb (450 gm) sugar. Stir until sugar is partly dissolved. Cook over slow heat, stirring constantly until it thickens. Remove from heat, cool and seal in a glass jar."

 --C. Anne Wilson, The Book of Marmalade, Prospect Books, 2010

That's it. So, as with all really old school recipes we have to use our powers of deduction to find the nuances.

1. How big were lemons back in the 18th century? Well, after some Googling, and I am not a graduate student, just some guy who cooks for a living, they look pretty big in old still life paintings. So I am adjusting, cause the lemons I have today are small. I will use 8. One thing I did do is to take some knowledge from other marmalade and jelly recipes that you really only want to at most have a 1:1 ratio of fruit to sugar. So I weighed the juice and the zest combined and then weighed an equal amount of sugar. This made studying old still lifes pointless.

2. Do they want pith? I don't think so. I decide no pith.

This seems like it's just kind of thickening sugar with the natural pectin and lemon flavors. OK, I got this.

3. Slow heat = low heat. I really like the term slow heat. It has nice implications.

4. "until it thickens". HOW THICK? Did they just grow up knowing when it was done? I will figure it out, I am a professional you know. If you want fresher jams and jellies and accelerate the gelling you can add some pectin later in the process. just a little bit goes a long way. A lot will give you a rubbery brick.

5. "Seal in a glass jar". Hot water bath? Sure. I feel like being a little safer than our ancestors. I can do that.

And so I made lemon jelly stuff. It cooked for about two hours and was then setup. Not too thick because it gets thicker when it cools. It turned out pretty well. Tasty. Puckery. Full flavored but not saccharin sweet.

I would use it on toast. Or to finish a simple butter sauce for some poached fish. Or in a cocktail with gin. Have fun.  

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