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Stock for Aspic Jelly, Economical
Put a pint of stock into a saucepan. Add two ounces of gelatine, a bay-leaf, a small sprig of thyme, three cloves, three shallots, and a quarter of a blade of mace, and stir the liquor over the fire till the gelatine is dissolved. Pour it out, and let it become almost cold. Whisk the white of an egg with a quarter of a pint of water. Add the crushed shell of the egg, and a tea-spoonful of tarragon vinegar. Return the stock to the saucepan, and stir the egg mixture briskly into it over the fire till it boils. Let it boil for ten minutes and then settle for ten minutes. Strain through a jelly-bag into a large shallow dish, and when cold and stiff the jelly will be fit for use. Time, altogether, about an hour.
A clarified savoury jelly for coating cold meats, lining moulds and glazing galantines. The "economical" part is the gelatine: a proper aspic was built from calf's foot or a long-reduced veal and knuckle stock, and this version buys the set in a packet.
- The hinge: stop stirring once it boilsThe egg white and shell form a raft that traps the cloudy particles. Stir briskly only until the surface breaks into a boil, then leave it strictly alone / tears in the raft mean a murky jelly no amount of straining will fix. Keep it at a bare, lazy simmer for the ten minutes rather than a rolling boil.
- Degrease the stock firstAny fat left in the pint will emulsify and haze the finished jelly. Chill the stock, lift off the solid cap, and blot the surface with kitchen paper before you begin.
- Gelatine quantity is not a modern quantityTwo ounces (about 55 g) to one imperial pint (570 ml) is a great deal by today's standards. Victorian gelatine was less consistent than the modern product and may well have been weaker; for a firm aspic that will unmould, reckon on something in the region of 1/2-3/4 oz (15-20 g) of modern powder or leaf per pint, and less again if you only want a coating jelly.
- MeasuresA pint here is the imperial 20 fl oz (570 ml); a quarter-pint is 5 fl oz (150 ml). A blade of mace is one lacy piece of nutmeg husk / a quarter blade is a token amount, roughly a pinch of ground mace at most.
- Season at the end, and taste coldThe recipe gives no salt, on the assumption the stock is already seasoned. Jelly tastes markedly blander cold than hot, so season the clarified liquid a shade more assertively than seems right, and check the tarragon vinegar has left enough sharpness.
- The jelly-bagScald the bag or a double thickness of muslin in boiling water and hang it over the bowl before you start. Ladle the liquid in gently, raft and all, and never squeeze or wring / let it drip. If the first run is cloudy, pass it through the same bed again.
- Yield and useOne pint gives enough to line and fill a 1-pint mould, or to glaze a chicken and a plate of cold cuts. It sets in about two hours in the refrigerator and keeps three or four days covered; it can be melted and reset once.
Aspic belongs to the cold buffet of the nineteenth-century table, where the shine of a clear jelly over a galantine or a mould of chicken and tongue was as much of the point as the eating. The word is usually traced to the French for asp, the coiled snake, the reference generally said to be to the ringed pattern of a moulded jelly or to its coldness. Traditionally the set came from bones and calf's feet simmered for hours, which is why Cassell's calls this version economical: refined commercial gelatine let a household with a pint of ordinary stock produce in an hour what had taken far longer. The egg-white clarification, however, is unchanged / it is the same raft method used for consomm",