Claret Jelly

My sister-in-law, Mara, gave me the recipe for this wonderfully fragrant and beautifully coloured jelly. I allow the wine to boil because you burn off the alcohol, but even then a lot of my friends who are also nondrinking don’t feel comfortable around it. It is, I think, a typical late eighteenth-century recipe and you can use both port and claret together, if you want, although I tend to use just the claret.

One of the most embarrassing things I ever did was durin