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GLOUCESTER JELLY (Invalid cookery)
Put an ounce each of ground rice, sago, eringo-root, hartshorn-shavings, and pearl barley into a saucepan, with two quarts of water, and boil gently until the liquid is reduced to one quart. Strain, and put aside till wanted. It may be sweetened and flavoured, and eaten like jelly, or a few spoonfuls of it may be dissolved in milk, tea, or broth. It is nourishing, and easily digested. Gelatine or isinglass may be used instead of hartshorn shavings, if preferred. Time, about two hours to boil. Probable cost, 6d. per quart. Sufficient for one quart of jelly.
A restorative from the invalid-cookery chapter: a thin starch-and-gelatin decoction meant to be spooned into milk or broth for someone who could not manage solid food. Two of the five ingredients are no longer buyable, and the result is nothing like a modern set jelly.
- The measuresAn ounce is 28 g of each solid, so five ounces (about 140 g) in total. The quarts are imperial: two quarts is roughly 2.3 litres, reduced by long simmering to about 1.1 litres.
- Hartshorn shavingsShaved hart's (deer) antler, boiled to extract its gelatin. It has not been a grocery item for well over a century. Cassell's own suggestion of gelatine or isinglass is the answer; leaf gelatine will give it body, added off the heat at the end rather than boiled for two hours.
- Eringo-rootThe candied root of sea holly, Eryngium maritimum, once sold by confectioners as a sweetmeat and tonic. It has declined on British coasts and, like all wild plants in Britain, may not be uprooted without the landowner's permission; candied eringo is no longer sold. Leave it out; it contributed sweetness and reputation rather than substance.
- Sago and ground riceBoth are still sold. Sago pearls are palm starch; ground rice is coarser than rice flour and is what thickens the liquid along with the barley. Rinse the pearl barley first or the finished jelly tastes dusty.
- The hinge: keep it at a bare simmer and stirGround rice and sago sink and catch. Use a heavy pan, stir every few minutes, and hold the liquid just trembling. A rolling boil will scorch the starch and the whole quart will taste of it.
- StrainingStrain hot through a fine sieve lined with muslin. Once it cools the starch thickens and nothing will pass. Press the solids gently; forcing them through clouds the jelly.
- What you actually getA soft, opaque, faintly setting cream rather than a clear wobbling jelly. It will be bland on its own; the recipe says only that it "may be sweetened and flavoured".
- KeepingA starch-and-gelatin liquid with no sugar or acid is a good bacterial medium. The recipe says only to put it aside till wanted; refrigerate it and use within two or three days, reheating each portion.
- YieldAbout a litre; the book gives it only as "sufficient for one quart of jelly".
Invalid cookery had its own chapter in most large Victorian household manuals, and Cassell's is no exception: the sickroom was managed at home, convalescence was long, and the cook was expected to produce a series of nourishing liquids that a weak stomach could take. Gloucester jelly belongs to a family of these restorative jellies, alongside calf's-foot jelly, arrowroot and beef tea, whose common principle was to combine a bland starch with animal gelatin and serve it barely flavoured. Hartshorn shavings were one of the usual gelatin sources, alongside calf's foot and isinglass, before commercial packet gelatine became cheap and reliable in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the recipe's aside that gelatine or isinglass "may be used instead" catches that changeover in progress. Eringo, the candied root of sea holly, was sold as a restorative and reputed aphrodisiac from the sixteenth century onward, and is the "eringoes" Falstaff calls for in The Merry Wives of Windsor. By the time Cassell's printed this it was a fossil ingredient, included because tradition demanded it rather than because anyone believed it did much.