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JELLY BREAD (Invalid Cookery)
Remove the crust from a penny roll. Cut the crumb into thin slices, and toast these to a bright brown on each side. Put them into a saucepan with a quart of cold spring water, and simmer gently until the liquid will jelly, which point may be known by putting a little on one side to cool. Strain through muslin, sweeten, and flavour with wine and lemon-juice, if permitted. Time, an hour and a half to two hours. Probable cost, 2d., exclusive of the wine. Sufficient for one person.
A sickroom drink rather than a dish: toasted bread simmered down until the starch thickens the water into something barely spoonable. It works, but only if you understand what "will jelly" means here.
- The hinge: how thick is "jelly"This will never set like gelatine. What you are after is a liquid that thickens to a soft, barely-wobbling gel on a cold saucer, which comes from bread starch alone. Test on a cold plate every twenty minutes and stop when a spoonful holds a faint shape as it cools.
- A penny rollA small plain white roll; sizes were not standardised, but expect only a couple of ounces of crumb once the crust is off. Any soft white roll or two thick slices of white bread serves; a dense sourdough or wholemeal will muddy both colour and flavour.
- A quartCassell is British, so an imperial quart of 40 fl oz (about 1.1 litres). It reduces considerably over two hours, which is the point.
- "Bright brown" toastBefore the sweetening and flavouring go in, the browning supplies effectively all the taste, so take the slices to a definite even brown, not pale gold. Burnt patches will make the whole quart bitter and cannot be strained out.
- Spring waterSpring water was commonly specified in sickroom cookery, plausibly because piped supplies were not trusted for an invalid, though the recipe gives no reason. Filtered or ordinary drinking water is fine now.
- Simmer, do not boilA gentle simmer with the lid ajar; a rolling boil drives off the water too fast and scorches starch onto the pan base. Add a little hot water if it reduces below about half.
- StrainingMuslin or a fine sieve lined with a coffee filter. Do not press the pulp through or the drink turns cloudy and pasty rather than clear and jellied.
- "If permitted"The wine and lemon were subject to the doctor's orders, not the cook's. The recipe specifies only wine, lemon-juice and sweetening, in unstated quantities; a little wine, a squeeze of lemon and sugar to taste answer it. Without them the result is close to flavourless.
- Yield and keepingOne invalid's portion, taken warm or cold over a day. It sets more firmly in the refrigerator and should be used within 24 hours, as a lightly sweetened starch liquid spoils quickly.
"Invalid cookery" was a standard department of Victorian and Edwardian household manuals, and Cassell's is no exception: before intravenous fluids and commercial nutrition, feeding the sick was a kitchen job, and the repertoire ran to beef tea, barley water, arrowroot, panada and toast water. Jelly bread belongs to the last of these — a family of preparations in which toasted bread was steeped or simmered in water to give an easily swallowed, faintly nourishing drink for patients with fever or a disordered stomach. The reliance on toasting is deliberate: browning was often said at the time to make the starch more digestible, and it supplied the only taste. The closing phrase "if permitted" is the most revealing line in the recipe, a reminder that the sickroom cook worked under a physician's instructions, and that wine and lemon-juice were treated as something closer to medicine than seasoning. The costing at twopence also shows the intent — this was food a household of very modest means could still manage for someone ill.