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Jelly, Coffee
Soak a quarter of an ounce of gelatine in half a gill of cold water for half an hour; then pour on it half a pint of boiling water, and add two ounces of sugar, one gill of strong coffee, and half a tea-spoonful of vanilla. Strain through a napkin into a glass dish. Stand it in a refrigerator, or any cool place, until firm. Serve with cream and sugar. Or the jelly may be moulded, and served with whipped cream arranged round the shape.
A soft-set coffee jelly built on a single sachet of gelatine. The whole thing hinges on the strength of the coffee and on not overheating the gelatine.
- The measurements in modern termsA gill is 5 fl oz, so half a gill is 2.5 fl oz (70 ml) and one gill is 5 fl oz (150 ml). Cassell's is a British book, so half a pint is 10 fl oz (285 ml). A quarter ounce of gelatine is about 7 g, which is one standard supermarket sachet.
- Set strengthRoughly 7 g of gelatine to about 17 fl oz (500 ml) of liquid gives a trembling, spoonable set rather than a firm one. That suits the glass dish; for the moulded version at the end, use half again as much gelatine so the shape will stand when turned out.
- Do not boil itPour the boiling water onto the bloomed gelatine and stir off the heat until it dissolves. Gelatine held at a rolling boil loses setting power, and the aim here is only to melt it.
- "Strong coffee"Read this as a small cup of properly strong brewed coffee, not espresso strength and not instant. It is well over a quarter of the total liquid, so anything weak will taste of little more than sweetened water. Add it after the gelatine has dissolved so the flavour is not cooked off.
- Straining through a napkinThis is for clarity, and it matters more than it sounds: coffee grounds and gelatine scum both cloud the finished jelly. A double layer of muslin or a fine coffee filter does the same job. Pour slowly and do not squeeze the cloth.
- Setting timeTwo to three hours in the refrigerator for glasses, four hours or overnight for a mould. "Any cool place" was written for a house without refrigeration; the fridge is the sensible choice.
- Turning out the mouldRinse the mould with cold water before filling. To release, dip it briefly in hot water and invert onto a wetted plate so the jelly can be slid into position.
- YieldAbout 500 ml, which fills four small glasses or one half-litre mould. Serve very cold with pouring cream, or with lightly whipped unsweetened cream around the turned-out shape.
Coffee jelly belongs to the great age of commercial gelatine. Through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries a clear jelly meant boiling calves' feet for hours and clarifying the result with egg white, which is why jellies were a display dish for households with servants. Packaged sheet and powdered gelatine, sold in Britain by firms such as Nelson's and Cox's from the middle of the nineteenth century, reduced that labour to half an hour of soaking, and cookery dictionaries like Cassell's promptly filled up with jellies flavoured with wine, fruit juice, chocolate and coffee. The dish had a particularly long life in New England, where coffee jelly with cream remained a standard restaurant sweet well into the twentieth century, and in Japan, where k u014dh u012b zer u012b arrived with Western-style cafés and is still widely sold. The instruction to "stand it in a refrigerator, or any cool place" catches the moment neatly: a refrigerator at this date meant an ice-chest or ice-cooled cabinet, and the writer could not assume the reader had one.