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Aspic Jelly
One and a half pints of clear stock; if amber jelly is made beef must be used, and for white jelly use chicken or veal. Soak half a box of gelatine one and a half hours in half a cupful of cold water; add salt, a stalk of celery, one dozen pepper corns, two slices of onion, three cloves; beat the white of one egg with a spoonful of the cold stock Put all of the mixture over the fire, and when it begins to boil, remove from the fire, putting it where it will slightly simmer twenty-five minutes. Strain the jelly through a cloth and put into a mould and set in a cold place to get hard.
A clarified savoury jelly for moulding cold meats, eggs or vegetables. The whole procedure hangs on the egg-white raft, and everything else is seasoning.
- The hinge: never let it boil hardThe beaten egg white coagulates as the stock heats, trapping cloudy particles and rising as a raft. A rolling boil breaks the raft apart and redistributes what it collected, and the jelly goes murky. Bring it just to the point of movement, then hold it at the barest tremble for the twenty-five minutes given.
- Do not stir, and do not press the strainerOnce the raft forms, leave it alone. Ladle the liquid out through a sieve lined with a doubled square of dampened muslin or a coffee filter, and let it drip. Squeezing the cloth forces sediment through and undoes the clarification.
- Half a box of gelatinePeriod cookbooks generally reckon half a box of granulated gelatine as about half an ounce, roughly two modern quarter-ounce envelopes, about four and a half teaspoons, though box sizes varied by maker. Against a pint and a half of stock that gives a firm jelly that will unmould and hold a cut edge.
- Sheet gelatineIf you work in leaves, half an ounce of powder is roughly eight sheets of platinum-grade gelatine. Soak them in plenty of cold water and lift them out squeezed rather than adding the soaking liquid.
- Amber and whiteThe distinction is colour, not method. Beef stock gives the brown-gold jelly used around cold beef and game; chicken or veal gives the pale one used with poultry, tongue and eggs. Either must be thoroughly degreased first, since fat globules will not clarify out and will cloud the surface.
- Stock bodyThe recipe assumes a stock made from bones and feet with natural setting power, which most cartons do not have. Use a well-reduced homemade stock, or accept that the gelatine is doing all the work and keep the quantity as given.
- SeasoningSalt firmly. Cold food tastes flatter than hot, and an under-salted aspic is insipid. Some period aspic recipes include sherry or lemon juice, which is worth doing.
- Setting and yieldAbout three to three and a half cups, enough to line and fill a one-quart mould, serving six to eight as part of a cold table. Give it at least four hours in the refrigerator, or overnight. Unmould by dipping the mould to the rim in hot water for five seconds and inverting onto a wetted plate, which lets you slide the jelly into position.
A clear jelly was a display of skill at the turn of the twentieth century: it proved the cook could make a strong stock, degrease it properly and clarify it without clouding. Before packaged gelatine, jelly meant hours of boiling calves' feet, and the convenience of commercially prepared gelatine, sold in sheets and later in granulated form, helped put moulded aspics on middle-class tables. The name is generally traced to the French aspic, though the reason for the word is disputed, with the old suggestion that it refers to the coldness of the asp being folk etymology rather than fact. What the recipe shows most clearly is that clarified stock jelly was treated as a base ingredient, made in quantity and kept to line moulds, glaze cold joints and set whatever the larder offered.