Home › The Principles of Cookery › Lemon Jelly, Isinglass, Superlative
Lemon Jelly, Isinglass, Superlative
Take six large fresh lemons, rub them well with a soft cloth, then pare the rind very thinly from three of them, and throw it into a syrup made by boiling a pound of refined sugar in a pint of water for six minutes. Strain the juice of all the lemons through muslin, and when the syrup is cool, mix them together. Put two ounces and a half of best isinglass into an enamelled saucepan, and pour over it a pint of spring water which has been beaten up with half the white of an egg. Stir the liquid gently until a scum begins to form, then let it boil softly and skim it carefully. When it has boiled for five minutes, strain it, and mix it with the clarified syrup. Add a little sherry if this is wished, and run the jelly through muslin until it is quite clear. Put it into damp moulds, and stand these in a cool place or upon ice until it is set. Before turning out, dip the mould for a moment in hot water, then turn it upside down on the dish. Serve at once. Time, an hour and a half to prepare. Probable cost, exclusive of the sherry, 3s. 6d. Sufficient for three pints of jelly.
A Victorian moulded jelly that depends entirely on clarity: the syrup, the isinglass and the juice are each strained before they meet, and again afterwards. Everything else is straightforward.
- IsinglassIsinglass is collagen from fish swim bladders, still sold for brewing and picture conservation but not as a kitchen setting agent. Modern powdered or leaf gelatine is stronger by weight, so 2½ oz of it would give a rubbery jelly; work instead from the gelatine proportions on the packet for three pints of liquid, or follow a current recipe.
- Pare the rind thinlyOnly the coloured zest, with no white pith, or the jelly turns bitter. A vegetable peeler or microplane is easier than the knife the book assumes.
- The egg whiteHalf a white beaten into the water is a clarifying agent: it coagulates as the liquid heats, traps fine particles, and rises as the scum you skim off. Do not stir once the scum has begun to form or you break the raft back into the liquid.
- Enamelled saucepanThe instruction is about acid, not nostalgia. Lemon juice in bare iron, aluminium or unlined copper picks up a metallic taste and can discolour; stainless steel is fine.
- Spring waterWritten when household water was often hard or off-tasting. Filtered tap water does the job.
- Setting"A cool place or upon ice" means the refrigerator now. Allow four hours for small moulds and up to overnight for a large one; three pints in a single mould sets slowly at the centre.
- Turning outA moment in hot water is literal, two or three seconds. Longer melts the outer surface and the jelly slumps. Damping the mould before filling, as directed, helps it release.
- Yield and servingThree pints, so roughly eight to ten servings. Serve the day it is made; a gelatine jelly weeps and clouds after a day or two in the cold.
- Cost3s. 6d. reflects the price of isinglass, which was the expensive item here rather than the sugar or the fruit.
Clear moulded jellies were a display dish in nineteenth-century English houses, and their whole point was transparency: a cook who could send up a jelly you could read print through had demonstrably strained, clarified and skimmed properly. Isinglass, imported in sheets and shreds from Russia and from Brazil, was the prestige setting agent before commercial powdered gelatine became cheap and reliable. The egg-white raft does the same work here that it does in consomme.