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JELLY, MEAT, FOR PIES (economical)
Soak about an ounce of gelatine in a little cold water. Let it swell. Mix half a teaspoonful of Bovril with a pint of boiling water, and put it into a saucepan with a shallot, a teaspoonful of salt, half a dozen peppercorns, a clove, the very thin rind of a quarter of a lemon, and a dessert-spoonful of tarragon vinegar. Simmer gently until the flavouring is extracted, add the gelatine, and when this is dissolved, strain the liquid through a bag, add a wine-glassful of white wine, if approved, and put the jelly aside to set. Cut it into dice or use it as required. Time, forty minutes to simmer the gravy. Probable cost, 5d., exclusive of the wine. Sufficient for a pint and a half of jelly.
A quick aspic built on beef extract rather than a long-simmered calf's-foot stock, meant to be diced into raised pies and pork pies or poured in warm to fill the gap under the crust. The set needs to be firm enough to cut cleanly, which drives most of the decisions below.
- The gelatine ratio is the hingeAn ounce of gelatine to a pint of liquid is roughly four 7 g sachets to 20 fl oz — several times the gelatine in a dessert jelly. That is deliberate: the jelly has to hold a diced cube at room temperature in a pie. Cutting it back gives you a sauce, not a jelly. Note that the recipe's stated yield of a pint and a half does not square with the pint of water it begins with, so treat the ratio as approximate.
- Leaf versus powderVictorian gelatine was sold in sheets as well as in shredded and powdered forms, and was soaked to swell before dissolving. Modern powdered gelatine behaves the same way — sprinkle over a few tablespoons of cold water, let it bloom, then stir into the hot strained liquid off the boil. Prolonged boiling weakens gelatine's setting power.
- BovrilStill sold and essentially unchanged in role: a salty beef extract paste. Half a teaspoon to a pint gives colour and savour rather than much body. Any concentrated beef stock paste works, but taste before adding the teaspoonful of salt, which on top of the extract makes a distinctly seasoned jelly.
- MeasuresA pint here is the imperial 20 fl oz. A wine-glassful is about 2 fl oz, a dessert-spoonful about 2 teaspoons. The stated yield of a pint and a half does not follow from those quantities and appears to be loose.
- Simmering timeForty minutes at a bare tremble, uncovered, will reduce a pint noticeably; keep the heat low and the lid ajar, or top up with water at the end so the gelatine is not overwhelmed by a shrunken volume.
- Straining"Through a bag" means a jelly bag or a doubled square of muslin in a sieve. Let it drip rather than squeezing it, or the jelly clouds — not fatal in a pie, but the point of a cut dice is that it looks clear.
- Lemon rindOnly the coloured zest, pared thin with a peeler. Any white pith left on will turn the jelly bitter over forty minutes.
- KeepingThis is an unsterilised meat-flavoured jelly with no preservative beyond salt. Refrigerate it, and use it within two or three days.
Aspic in a raised pie is structural as much as decorative: as the meat cooks it shrinks away from the crust, and a savoury jelly poured through the hole in the lid fills the void, keeps the filling moist and helps seal it from the air. Traditionally that jelly came from calf's feet, pig's trotters or knuckle bones simmered for hours, which is exactly the expense and labour this "economical" version dodges — commercial gelatine and a jar of beef extract in place of a stockpot. Bovril, the concentrated beef extract that gives the jelly its colour and savour, is generally traced to the Scottish butcher John Lawson Johnston. Its appearance in a jelly recipe suggests something of the way branded factory products could stand in for the foundational stocks of the Victorian kitchen, and the flavourings here — shallot, clove, peppercorn, lemon peel and tarragon vinegar — are doing the work the bones used to do.