Home › The Principles of Cookery › Panachee Jelly
Panachee Jelly
Take any quantity of perfectly clear and transparent jelly, properly sweetened and flavoured. Dissolve it, and divide it into two equal portions, and colour one of these with three or four drops of prepared cochineal. Soak in cold water a mould large enough to contain the whole of the jelly, then fill it with alternate layers of the clear and the coloured jelly, remembering only to let each layer become perfectly stiff before another is added. If the jelly becomes so firm that it cannot easily be turned out, a napkin may be wrung out of boiling water, and wrapped round the mould for a minute or two, and this will probably be all that is required. Time, according to the state of the weather. The jelly will of course stiffen more quickly if the mould can be put into ice. Probable cost of calf's foot jelly, 2s. per pint.
A layered moulded jelly, and the whole thing turns on patience: each layer must set firm before the next warm one is poured, or the colours bleed into a single muddy band.
- The hinge — layer temperatureThe jelly you pour must be liquid but barely warm, around body temperature or a little below. Hot jelly will melt the set surface beneath it and blur the line; too cool and it will not bond, so the layers slide apart when turned out.
- The jelly itselfThe original assumes calf's foot jelly, made by simmering split calves' feet for hours and clarifying the stock with egg white. Powdered or leaf gelatine will serve in its place: roughly ½ oz of powdered gelatine per pint of liquid, or about four to five leaves, for a jelly firm enough to stand unsupported when unmoulded.
- CochinealPrepared cochineal was a liquid carmine tincture made from dried scale insects, sold ready-bottled for kitchen use. It is still available as carmine or E120, and any red food colouring works; three or four drops is a restrained quantity, though the depth of colour will depend on how much jelly is being tinted.
- "Soak the mould in cold water"Wetting the inside of the mould before filling is not superstition — it stops the jelly gripping the metal and makes release much easier. Do not dry it; pour into the wet mould.
- Setting times"According to the state of the weather" means an unheated Victorian larder. In a modern refrigerator each thin layer sets in 20 to 30 minutes; a half-inch layer nearer 45. The whole thing wants several hours to firm through before unmoulding.
- Keeping the reserved jelly liquidThe waiting portions must not set while the layers chill. Hold both bowls in a pan of warm water off the heat, or reheat gently and let cool again — repeated boiling weakens gelatine's set.
- UnmouldingThe hot napkin still works, but a five-to-ten-second dip in hot water to the rim is quicker. Loosen the top edge with a fingertip, invert onto a wetted plate so the jelly can be slid into position, and lift the mould straight up.
- Yield and costA quart mould serves six to eight. "2s. per pint" is two shillings — a genuinely expensive dish in a period when a good jelly meant hours of boiling bones and clarifying.
Panachée is French for variegated or streaked, from the plume or panache on a helmet, and in nineteenth-century kitchens it labelled anything built in contrasting bands — panachée ices, panachée creams, this striped jelly. It is in effect a technique exercise, teaching the cook to judge when a jelly is set enough to receive the next layer, and the pay-off is purely visual. Clear jelly was a display food, the proof that a household could afford both the calves' feet and the labour of clarifying stock with egg white until it ran bright, and moulded jellies were built up in stripes, spirals and mosaics for the supper table. Cochineal, imported from Mexico and Central America and generally traced to Spanish colonial trade, was the standard kitchen red before coal-tar dyes displaced it in the later part of the century.