Left over jelly made into drinks

Two jelly drink recipes made when "jams or jellies are too old" for "table use" contain vinegar and soda for effervescence - Beecher, 1850 or the later, 1884 recipe is just jelly stirred in water and sugar.


Effervescing Jelly Drinks.
When jams or jellies are too old to be good for table use, mix them with good vinegar, and then use them with soda, or saleratus, as directed:

Effervescing Fruit Drinks. 
Very fine drinks for summer are prepared by putting strawberries, raspberries, or blackberries into good vinegar and then straining it off, and adding a new supply of fruit till enough flavor is secured, as directed in Strawberry Vinegar. Keep the vinegar bottled, and in hot weather use it thus. Dissolve half a teaspoonful or less of saleratus, or soda in a tumbler, very little water till the lumps are all out. Then fill the tumbler two-thirds full of water, and then add the fruit vinegar. If several are to drink, put the soda, or saleratus into the pitcher, and then put the fruit vinegar into each tumbler, and pour the alkali water from the pitcher into each tumbler, as each person is all ready to drink, as delay spoils it.

Beecher, Catharine.  Miss Beecher's Domestic Receipt-book.  NY: 1850

Jelly Drinks.
A little jelly or fruit syrup dissolved in a goblet of water with a little sugar is a refreshing drink. Lime juice squeezed into lemonade gives it a tart but pleasing flavor. A little orange juice is also an improvement in nearly all summer drinks.
Ellsworth, Milon. The Successful Housekeeper.  Detroit: 1884


The interesting jelly glasses are from Ola Powell’s Successful Canning and Preserving. Phila: 1917.  Pouring wax onto the jelly using coffee pot -

 Powell's layered jelly -

©2018 Patricia Bixler Reber
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