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Punchim Jelly
Put a quarter of an ounce of gelatine to soak in half a pint of cold water, and at the end of half an hour pour on half a pint of hot tea; then add two ounces of sugar, half a gill of Jamaica rum, a table-spoonful of brandy, and five drops of essence of almond. Strain through a fine napkin, and set it in a cool place to become firm.
A Victorian punch set with gelatine, and a soft one at that. The proportions work, but the set is marginal and the alcohol goes in cold for a reason.
- The hinge: dissolve before you add spiritsThe gelatine must be fully dissolved in the hot tea before the rum and brandy go in. Alcohol inhibits gelatine, and any grains still swollen at that point will never dissolve; the jelly will be gritty and slack.
- Gill and half-gillA British gill is 5 fl oz, so half a gill of rum is about 2½ fl oz, nearer a third of a cup than a quarter. The tablespoon of brandy is on top of that.
- The set is deliberately softA quarter ounce of gelatine is roughly 7 g, one modern envelope, against about 23 fl oz of liquid, about an eighth of it spirit. That gives a spoonable jelly served in glasses, not something you can turn out of a mould. For an unmoulded jelly you need at least double the gelatine.
- Gelatine then and nowLate-Victorian gelatine came in sheets or shreds and needed the full half-hour soak specified. Modern powdered gelatine blooms in five minutes; sprinkle it over the cold water rather than dumping it in, or it clumps.
- Essence of almondFive drops is the whole almond note of the dish. Use modern almond extract, which is benzaldehyde-based; measure it rather than guessing, because a little too much will overwhelm everything else.
- The teaBrew it strong, at black-tea strength, and strain the leaves out. It is carrying the dilution of the soaking water as well as its own, and weak tea leaves the jelly tasting only of sugar and rum.
- Straining through a napkinA doubled square of muslin or cheesecloth in a sieve does the same job. It catches tea fines and any undissolved gelatine and gives the clear amber the dish is built around.
- Yield and servingAbout 1¼ pints, enough for six small glasses or custard cups. Chill at least four hours. Nothing is boiled after the spirits go in, so most of the alcohol is still there.
Punch jelly is punch made solid, and it belongs to the moment when commercial gelatine displaced the calf's-foot stock that earlier cooks boiled down and clarified. Once packet gelatine from firms like Nelson's and Cox's was cheap and reliable, any liquid a household liked could be set, and the punch bowl was an obvious candidate. The word punch itself is generally traced to a Hindi term for five, for the five components of the original sailors' drink: spirit, sugar, lemon, water and spice. The Jamaica rum is specific rather than incidental. Heavy Jamaican rum was one of the punch spirits current in British kitchens in the nineteenth century, alongside brandy, arrack and whisky, its pungency being exactly what a diluted, sweetened, chilled jelly needs to taste of anything at all.