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Macedoine of Fruits in Jelly
Make a syrup as in following recipe. Dip the fruits in it, and arrange them in a glass bowl for serving. Over each layer pour a jelly on the point of setting. The top layer should be of fruit, piled rather high, and over it some chopped jelly may be laid, with some whipped or frozen cream.
A layered fruit-and-jelly dish that depends entirely on timing rather than ingredients. The recipe assumes you have a syrup and a wine or fruit jelly already in hand, and that you know what "on the point of setting" feels like.
- The hinge: jelly temperatureJelly poured hot will float the fruit and cloud the layers; jelly fully set cannot be poured at all. You want it syrupy and just beginning to thicken at the edges of the bowl, then let each layer firm in the refrigerator before adding the next.
- The jelly itselfPeriod recipes mean a clarified calf's-foot or isinglass jelly, usually flavoured with sherry, madeira or lemon. Powdered gelatine works: about 2 1/4 teaspoons (one standard envelope) per 2 cups of liquid gives a soft set, and rather less liquid per envelope if you want a jelly firm enough to chop for the garnish.
- Fruits to avoidFresh pineapple, kiwi, papaya and figs contain proteases that will digest gelatine and leave you with soup. Use them canned or briefly cooked, or leave them out. Berries, stone fruit, grapes and citrus segments all behave.
- Dipping in syrupThe syrup coat keeps cut fruit from weeping into the jelly and dulling it. A plain 1:1 sugar syrup, cooled, is enough; drain the fruit well on a rack before it goes in the bowl or the excess will streak the layers.
- What macedoine means hereUniform small dice, roughly 1/4 to 1/2 inch, so the layers read as a mosaic rather than a fruit salad. Cut everything to the same size and the finished bowl looks deliberate.
- Chopped jellySet a shallow tray of the same jelly separately, then cut it across with a wet knife to make sparkling fragments. It is a garnish, not structure, and should go on at the last moment because it softens quickly at room temperature.
- Frozen cream"Frozen cream" usually means sweetened cream frozen without churning, closer to a semifreddo than ice cream, though the term was also used loosely for an ice cream. Lightly whipped cream, barely sweetened, is the easier and better foil to the sugar already in the syrup and jelly.
- Yield and servingA 2-quart glass bowl will serve roughly 8 to 10, though the recipe itself specifies no quantities. Assemble the day before if you like, but hold back the chopped jelly and cream until serving, and bring the bowl out cold.
Macédoine is a French kitchen term for a mixture of small even pieces; it is traditionally explained as an allusion to Macedonia and the empire of Alexander, a territory made up of many peoples, though that explanation is customary rather than documented. The word covers both the savoury vegetable macédoine and this sweet version, and fruit-in-jelly forms were a familiar summer entremets in nineteenth-century English cookery books. The instructions assume the syrup and the jelly are covered elsewhere, which is why the method alone is given here. Dishes like this belonged to the era of clear jelly, when a cook's skill was judged partly on getting calf's-foot or isinglass jelly brilliantly transparent, and a glass bowl showed the result.