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Jelly for the Eggs
Put one pint of cold water on one paper Cox's gelatine, let it stand one hour, add one and one fourth pound sugar, the rind of one lemon, and juice of two, one pint Madeira or Sherry wine, two thirds of a quart of boiling water; strain and set it away in the dish you wish to serve it in. A high flat glass dish is suitable for it. When the jelly is nearly cold break the shell from. the blanc mange and place the artificial eggs in the jelly, if put in at the right time the jelly will harden around them and in that way hold them up, it is a handsome and delicious dish.
A Victorian wine jelly built as a showpiece: the blanc mange "eggs" of the companion recipe are suspended in clear lemon-and-Madeira jelly. The whole thing turns on catching the jelly at the right stage of setting.
- The hinge: set the eggs at syrup stageThe jelly must be cold enough to be thick and syrupy but not yet firm. Too warm and the eggs sink and the jelly clouds; too cold and they sit on a skin instead of being gripped. Chill the dish, pour a shallow base layer, let it firm, then add the eggs and the remaining nearly-set jelly.
- "One paper Cox's gelatine" is ambiguousJ & G Cox sold gelatine in sheets packed in paper packets, and what "one paper" weighed is not firmly established (something under an ounce is the usual guess); strengths varied too. The liquid here totals about 6 2/3 cups, or roughly 1 2/3 quarts, so with modern powdered gelatine (one 1/4-oz envelope sets 2 cups) you would need three to four envelopes for a jelly firm enough to hold the eggs upright.
- Bloom, then dissolveThe hour in cold water is blooming, not setting. The two-thirds quart of boiling water (about 2 2/3 cups) is what dissolves the gelatine; stir until no grains remain against the back of a spoon before the wine goes in.
- Add the wine off the heatA full pint of Madeira or sherry is the flavour of the dish, and it is never cooked. Note that the recipe itself adds the wine before the boiling water; if you would rather not drive off the aromatics, dissolve the gelatine in the boiling water first and stir the wine in once it has stopped steaming. The finished jelly is alcoholic and unsuitable for children.
- SugarOne and a quarter pounds is about 2 3/4 cups — very sweet even for a fortified-wine jelly. Three quarters of a pound gives a result closer to modern taste, though a little sugar does help the set and the clarity.
- StrainingStrain through a double thickness of damp cheesecloth, not just a sieve, and let it drip rather than pressing it. Clarity is the whole point when the eggs are meant to show through.
- The eggshellsThe blanc mange is moulded in blown eggshells. Scrub and scald the shells before filling; contamination is usually on the shell surface, though it can also occur inside the egg, and here the shell interior is in direct contact with a dessert that will be eaten cold.
- Vessel and yieldA "high flat glass dish" is probably a shallow footed compote, shallow enough to show the eggs and wide enough for them to sit apart. The quantity is large -- roughly 6 2/3 cups of jelly before the eggs go in -- and it will want several hours in the refrigerator to set through.
Wine jelly was the standard grand cold sweet of the later nineteenth century, and its appeal was optical as much as anything: commercial gelatine had only recently made a clear, reliable jelly available to a household cook without hours of boiling calves' feet. J & G Cox of Edinburgh was among the best-known suppliers, selling gelatine in sheets that American receipt books cite by the packet rather than by weight — one reason so many of these recipes are hard to scale now. The trick of moulding blanc mange in blown eggshells and floating the results in amber jelly belongs to the same taste for edible trompe l'oeil that produced mock turtle soup and hen's-nest puddings, and it is plainly a company dish: expensive in wine and sugar, requiring no oven, and made a day ahead.