Home › The Principles of Cookery › Sweet Jelly
Sweet Jelly
Soak an ounce of best gelatine in water for an hour. Drain it, and pour upon it half a pint of boiling water, then stir it until dissolved. Add the juice and peel of two lemons, and six ounces of loaf sugar, together with a large wine-glassful of wine or any approved liqueur, and as much cold water as will make up the quantity to one quart. Beat the whites of two eggs to froth. Briskly stir them with the crushed shells of the eggs into the liqueur, which should be almost cold. Bring it slowly to the boil, and let it simmer gently without touching it for ten minutes. Take it off the fire, and let it stand to settle for ten minutes, then strain it through a jelly-bag till it is quite clear and bright. When it is again cool, put it into one or more moulds, and let it stand in a cool place till it is stiff. When it is wanted, plunge it for a single instant into boiling water, turn it upon a glass dish, and serve. Time, eight or ten hours will be needed to stiffen the jelly if it is not set upon ice. Probable cost, 1s. 2d., exclusive of the wine or liqueur. Sufficient for eight or ten persons.
A straightforward wine jelly, clarified in the old manner with egg white and shell. The technique still works exactly as written; only the units and the gelatine need translating.
- The hinge: do not disturb the raftOnce the egg white goes in and the pan comes to a boil, the froth rises and traps the cloudiness. Stir it, poke it or let it gallop and the jelly turns muddy — bring it up slowly, then leave it alone for the full ten minutes.
- Gelatine quantityAn ounce is about 28 g, or four sachets of modern powdered gelatine, for a quart — an imperial quart here, about 1.1 litres. That gives a jelly firm enough to unmould and hold its shape, which is the point here. If you mean to serve it spooned into glasses, two-thirds of that is plenty.
- SoakingModern powder blooms in cold water in about five minutes rather than an hour; leaf gelatine needs about ten. The long soak probably reflects the coarser sheet gelatine of the period.
- Loaf sugarSugar sold in a hard cone, chipped off as needed. Six ounces of ordinary granulated sugar — roughly 170 g, or a scant cup — is the equivalent.
- A large wine-glassfulA wine-glass was reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so take a large one as 2½ to 3 fl oz (75–85 ml). Sherry, Madeira or a sweet white are all in keeping; brandy or an orange liqueur fits the recipe's own 'wine or any approved liqueur'.
- Lemon peelPare it thin with a peeler and take no white pith, which turns the jelly bitter over a long infusion.
- StrainingA jelly-bag is a cone of close flannel or calico. A double layer of scalded muslin in a sieve does the same job. Let it drip; squeezing the bag pushes the sediment straight through and undoes the clarifying.
- Setting and unmouldingEight to ten hours in a cool larder becomes four to six in a refrigerator. For turning out, a few seconds in hot rather than boiling water is safer — boiling water melts the surface faster than you can invert the mould.
- Fresh fruitIf you add fruit, avoid raw pineapple, kiwi, papaya, figs or fresh ginger. Their enzymes digest gelatine and the jelly will never set.
- YieldOne quart, which the book reckons at eight to ten servings — modest glass-dish portions by our standards, comfortably six.
Clear moulded jelly was a display dish, and for most of its history an expensive one: before commercial gelatine, the cook boiled calves' feet for hours, skimmed the fat, then clarified the result with egg white and shell exactly as described here. Isinglass, from the swim bladders of sturgeon, was the luxury shortcut. Packaged refined gelatine, sold by firms such as Nelson's and Swinborne's, spread through British kitchens over the second half of the nineteenth century and turned a two-day project into an afternoon's work, which is why the book can open so casually with "soak an ounce of best gelatine." The moulded shape mattered as much as the flavour: a jelly that stood up brilliant and unclouded on a glass dish advertised both a good cook and a cold larder, and elaborate copper and pewter jelly moulds were a standard part of a well-equipped Victorian kitchen.