Haw jelly

About a week ago now, BH decided that I was bored and needed an activity for the afternoon. Her eyes lighted upon the small hawthorn tree in our front garden, about to deposit its load of haws on the pavement and came up with the notion that I should pick the haws. It being quite possible that there were more than usual, it having been a good April for the flowers, as noticed at reference 1.

First boil

A plus point was the opportunity to deploy the new-to-me steps from Cornwall, noticed at reference 2, which turned out rather well, managing to be both light and steady. Furthermore, a light weight stainless bowl fitted neatly on the top stage, at about 15 inches wide proving an excellent receptacle. One could just drop the fruit from on high and most of the time it found its way in. A bit like picking black currants, except that both the haws and the clusters were a bit smaller. And one needed to be careful not to pull the twigs off with the haws. But after a while one's hands adjusted.

About an hour or so later, I had a pound and a half of haws. Meanwhile, BH had turned up haw jelly in Dorothy Hartley of reference 3, a book given her by my father, a long time ago now. With, according to Wikipedia, Hartley having served time as an advisor to our long-running rustic soap, 'The Archers'. So the first step was to boil them up with a little water, applying the potato masher from time to time.

Drip time

Next step, out with the jelly bag and, once filled with the mash, suspend from beam erected across the kitchen. Got to make a bit of a splash. With the bowl being the bowl mentioned above. A certain amount of hot bag squeezing to help things along. Left overnight.

Second boil: part I

About a pint and a half of liquor, so about a pound and a half of sugar. With our fine sauté pan from Marylebone doing service as a jam pan, which last are long retired. I associate to the days when we used a heavy copper jam pan, long since criminalised.

Second boil: part II

On to the second boil, removing a certain amount of froth, which seems to include all the stuff which makes the brew cloudy. Gell testing plate visible left, which a neighbour told us afterwards would have been better cooled down in the fridge. Get a better test that way.

The result

The result looked well enough, nice and clear, but sadly, had not set overnight. I had not got the gell test right. Notwithstanding, the egg cup full did rather well in porridge. Being liquid worked much better than the rather firm crab apple jelly noticed at reference 6. Although yesterday, BH went to the bother of turning some of that jelly into jam sauce - heating up the jelly with a little water and lemon juice - which worked much better with porridge than neat jelly.

Testing plate visible behind, complete with smears and splodges. BH rather likes to eat the scum, aka froth. Four jam jars - lately used for storing old screws and nails in the garage - clearly a bit optimistic.

We worried that liquid jelly would not keep, so onto the second boiling. With the bubbles being quite different to those snapped above. Something was clearly going on as the excess water boiled off. I stayed nearby, being a little concerned that it would froth over, in the way of boiling milk. A frothing over onto a hot hob which would have taken a good bit of cleaning up, never mind the waste involved.

Second outcome

Still didn't pass the gell test in a convincing way, but it looked right. And this time it did indeed set, having lost getting on for half its volume, after due allowance for sticky waste along the way. 

It will be interesting to see whether we bother with this particular sort of jam again. Probably not a good thing for us pensioners to use a lot of it, it being one of the most concentrated forms of sugar known to man, but it does do rather well on porridge and steamed jam puddings. And perhaps we ought to steer clear of butter and jam on toast.

Mother's Ruin

PS: on the facing page of Hartley, we had a cryptic reference to the use of a concoction of sloe gin, penny royal and valerian by country wives in 'connubial emergencies'. Diligent search at the time failed to confirm the notion that this was a 1950's style, covert allusion to abortion. While Wikipedia reveals this morning that penny royal, aka mentha pulegium, was indeed a folk remedy used as an abortifacient. A rural version of the potions advertised below.

Discretion assured

Trumpists and right-to-lifeists take note. The sort of people who hang out at reference 4. I had not realised until this morning they that as well as being opposed to start-of-life action, they are also opposed to end-of-life action, that is to say assisted dying. For which see reference 5.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/04/good-year.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/ladder-nostalgia.html.

Reference 3: Food in England - Dorothy Hartley - 1954.

Reference 4: https://www.nrlc.org/.

Reference 5: https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-crabs-continued.html.