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PUNCH JELLY (a French recipe)
Throw the peel of two sound lemons and half an ounce of tea into a syrup nearly boiling; cover it, and whilst it is cooling, run the juice of five lemons into it through a bag. Press the infusion through a silk sieve, and mix with it half a pint of good arrack or rum, and one ounce of isinglass, clarified. Finish as usual.
A jellied punch: lemon, tea, sugar syrup and spirit set with isinglass. The original assumes you already know the standard proportions for a jelly, so the two things it leaves out — the quantity of syrup and what "finish as usual" means — are what need filling in.
- The missing syrup quantityThe recipe gives no volume for the syrup, assuming the cook already knew the standard proportions. Working to a quart of finished jelly, roughly 1 1/2 pints of syrup (about 1 lb sugar dissolved in 1 1/2 pints water) with the lemon juice and half-pint of spirit brings the whole to a little over a quart.
- Isinglass and modern gelatineIsinglass is a setting agent made from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish; it is still sold for fining beer but is not a kitchen staple. Powdered or leaf gelatine replaces it, but weight for weight the two are not equivalent and Victorian isinglass varied in strength, so treat the one ounce as a signal to use a full-strength quart-setting quantity rather than a conversion.
- Alcohol weakens the setHalf a pint of spirit in a quart of jelly is a high proportion, and alcohol interferes with gel formation. The generous ounce of setting agent may well be a response to this. Expect a soft, trembling jelly rather than a firm one.
- Add the spirit off the heatArrack or rum goes in after the infusion has cooled and been strained, never into hot syrup. Heat drives off both the alcohol and the aromatics that are the point of the dish.
- Half an ounce of teaAbout 14 g of loose tea, roughly four heaped teaspoons; the recipe does not specify the kind. Steeped in near-boiling syrup and left to cool covered, it will be strong and slightly tannic, and that tannin balances the sweetness.
- ArrackThe arrack meant here is the South and Southeast Asian spirit distilled from palm sap or from sugarcane and rice, one of the common bases of eighteenth and nineteenth century punch. Batavia arrack is the closest thing still made; the recipe itself offers rum as the alternative.
- Bag and silk sieveThe bag (for the lemon juice) and the silk sieve (for the infusion) are for clarity; clearness was traditionally the mark of a good jelly. Two passes through damp muslin, without squeezing, does the same work.
- "Finish as usual"Pour into a wetted mould, chill until set (several hours, overnight for a jelly this soft), then unmould by dipping the mould briefly in warm water. A quart mould should serve six to eight as a dessert.
Punch jelly is punch made portable: the same lemon, sugar, tea and arrack that filled the punchbowl, set firm enough to eat with a spoon. Jellies of this kind ran through nineteenth-century English cookery as a display dish, poured into fluted or turreted moulds and turned out at the centre of a supper table. Cassell's labels this "a French recipe", and the silk sieve and the clarified isinglass belong to a kitchen with staff. The isinglass itself dates the page: it was the standard clear setting agent until commercially refined gelatine became cheap and reliable in the later part of the century, after which recipes of this type quietly switched over.