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Cream, Coffee
Boil a calf's foot in a quart of water till it is reduced to a pint of jelly, clear of sediment and fat. Make a tea-cupful of very strong coffee, clear it with a bit of isinglass that it may be perfectly bright; pour it on the jelly, and add a pint of very good cream; sweeten to taste. Give it one boil up, and pour it into a mould. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
This is a moulded coffee cream set with calf's-foot jelly — an early cold dessert from the era before packaged gelatine was a kitchen staple. The whole thing hinges on the strength of the jelly, so read that step first.
- The jelly is the structureA quart of water reduced to a pint over one calf's foot gives a stock stiff enough to set a pint of cream plus a cup of coffee. If the reduction is slack the dessert will not stand when turned out. Test it by chilling a spoonful on a cold saucer: it should be firmly rubbery, not merely syrupy.
- Substituting gelatineOne calf's foot yields roughly the setting power of 1/2 to 3/4 oz (about 2 to 3 standard 1/4 oz envelopes) of powdered gelatine, bloomed in a pint of liquid. Quantities in the original are approximate by nature — collagen yield varies with the size of the foot — so err toward a slightly firmer set.
- Skim and strain twice"Clear of sediment and fat" is doing real work. Chill the reduced stock, lift the fat cap off solid, then strain through muslin. Any fat left behind will taste of veal and mar the coffee.
- A tea-cupfulA Victorian teacup is usually reckoned at about 5 to 6 fl oz, rather than the 8 oz of a modern American measuring cup. 'Very strong' presumably means considerably stronger than a drinking brew, since a cupful must flavour a pint of cream and a pint of jelly.
- IsinglassIsinglass is dried sturgeon swim bladder, once used both as a setting agent and, as here, as a fining to drop the coffee grounds out of suspension. It is no longer a domestic ingredient. Filtering the coffee through a paper filter or fine muslin accomplishes the same clarity.
- One boil up onlyBring the mixture just to the boil and take it off, as the recipe says. Prolonged boiling risks the cream separating and skinning over, giving a grainy set.
- Cream'Very good cream' is best read today as heavy or double cream rather than a thin one; period cream was not graded by fat percentage. Single cream or half-and-half will give a thinner result once the coffee is added.
- Moulding and turning outRinse the mould with cold water before filling so the cream releases cleanly. Chill at least six hours, preferably overnight; dip the mould briefly in warm water to unmould. The mixture comes to roughly 2 1/4 to 2 1/2 pints and serves six to eight.
Calf's-foot jelly was a mainstay setting agent of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English kitchen, and this dessert belongs to the same family as blancmange and flummery: a sweetened, flavoured cream given body by boiled-down collagen and turned out of a decorative mould. It also sits in the tradition of invalid cookery, where calf's-foot jelly was prescribed as strengthening food for the sick, which is why so many household books of the period give space to extracting it. Coffee appears as a dessert flavouring in English cookery through the nineteenth century, alongside the fashion for the after-dinner cup. The 'probable cost' of 1s. 6d. is characteristic of the period's household manuals, which priced every dish for a middle-class reader keeping accounts.