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Strawberry Isinglass Jelly
Pick a quart of ripe red strawberries, put them into a bowl, and pour upon them a clear syrup made by boiling three-quarters of a pound of refined sugar with a pint of water for a quarter of an hour. Cover the dish, and leave the fruit to soak all night. Put two ounces and a half of isinglass into a saucepan with a pint of water which has been beaten up with half the white of an egg. Stir the mixture, and heat it gently till the isinglass is dissolved, carefully removing the scum till it ceases to rise. Strain the liquor through three or four folds of muslin, and when it is lukewarm, mix with it the syrup which has been drained from the strawberries, half a tea-cupful of red currant juice, and the strained juice of a fresh lemon. Mix the ingredients thoroughly, put the jelly into a damp mould, and stand it in a cool place or upon ice till it is set. If preferred, gelatine may be substituted for the isinglass, and the jelly will then be less expensive. The appearance of the mould will be improved if two or three spoonfuls of jelly are first poured into the mould, allowed to stiffen, then ornamented with large ripe strawberries, and the mould filled with jelly and strawberries alternately. Time, eight or nine hours to set the jelly. Probable cost. 4s. 6d. Sufficient for two moderate-sized moulds.
A Victorian moulded fruit jelly that depends entirely on the setting agent, and the setting agent is the one thing you will not be buying. Everything else is straightforward, provided the strawberry syrup is never boiled with the fruit.
- Isinglass and its modern replacementIsinglass is dried collagen from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish; the food-grade sheet form is essentially gone from retail, and what is sold today is fining powder for brewing. Cassell's own suggestion is the practical route: use gelatine. For roughly 5 cups of total liquid, about 3 envelopes (¾ oz / 21 g) of powdered gelatine gives a jelly firm enough to unmould.
- Skip the clarificationThe pint of water beaten with half an egg white, the skimming and the muslin straining all exist to clear cloudy, fishy-smelling isinglass. Modern gelatine dissolves clear, so bloom it in cold water, warm it gently without boiling, and leave the egg out entirely.
- The hinge: never boil the gelling liquidThe hinge: don't boil the gelling liquid -- Heat the dissolved gelatine only until it is clear and combine it with the syrup while both are lukewarm. Prolonged boiling can weaken gelatine and give a softer set that may not hold a mould.
- Old measuresA quart of strawberries is about 1½ lb of fruit. A tea-cupful in Victorian usage is conventionally about 4-5 fl oz, so half a tea-cupful of red currant juice is roughly ¼ cup. Refined sugar means ordinary white sugar.
- Overnight soakThree-quarters of a pound of sugar boiled with a pint of water for fifteen minutes gives a heavy syrup that draws colour and flavour out of the raw berries. Do the maceration covered in the refrigerator rather than in a larder, and drain the fruit well before layering.
- Layering the mouldThe alternating method works, but each layer must be tacky-set before the next goes in, or the berries float and the layers slide apart. Rinse the mould with cold water and do not oil it.
- Setting time and unmouldingEight or nine hours in a cool place is right for a Victorian ice-box; in a refrigerator 4-6 hours will set it, though overnight is safer for a tall mould. Dip the mould briefly in warm water and invert onto a wetted plate.
- YieldTwo moderate moulds; perhaps eight to ten servings. The 4s. 6d. probably reflects the cost of the isinglass, likely the dearest item on the list.
Isinglass was the standard clear-setting agent of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century kitchen, prized because it produced a brilliant, almost glassy jelly where calf's-foot stock gave something cloudier and more savoury. It was costly, imported largely from Russian sturgeon fisheries, and its use marked a dish as a piece of display cookery: a moulded jelly with whole fruit suspended in it was meant to be looked at down the length of a table before it was eaten. Cassell's noting that "gelatine may be substituted ... and the jelly will then be less expensive" catches the moment of changeover, as commercially manufactured sheet and powdered gelatine of the later nineteenth century put moulded jellies within reach of ordinary households and pushed isinglass out of the kitchen and into the brewery, where it survives as a fining agent. The red currant juice is not decoration but function: currants are high in pectin and acid, and a spoonful or two deepens the colour and sharpens a syrup that strawberries alone leave rather flat.