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White-Wine Jelly, Made with Isinglass or Gelatine
Soak for an hour an ounce of isinglass or gelatine in as much cold water as will cover it. Pour upon it three-quarters of a pint of boiling water, and stir it until dissolved. Let it get cold; then add as much white wine as will make up the quantity to one quart. Sherry or Marsala wine may be used, or a mixture of sherry and good raisin wine. Put it cold into a delicately-clean saucepan with the thin rind and strained juice of two fresh lemons, a quarter of a pound of roughly-powdered sugar, and the well-whisked whites and crushed shells of two eggs. Beat the mixture briskly for a minute or two, put it on the fire, and whisk it vigorously until it rises high in the pan. Put the lid on, draw the pan back, in order that a crust may form on the liquor. Lift it from the fire, and let it stand to settle for ten minutes. Wring a jelly-bag out of boiling water, pour the contents of the saucepan into it, and let it run through till clear. Be careful not to squeeze the jelly-bag, as this would make the jelly thick. Pour the jelly into a quart mould or into two pint moulds which have been soaked in cold water, and keep it in a cool place till wanted; turn it out upon a glass dish and serve. If it is to be put into glasses, pour it into a shallow dish, let it remain until stiff, and take it up in a dessert-spoon and put it into the glasses. Time to boil the jelly, a quarter of an hour. Probable cost, 1s., exclusive of the wine.
A clarified wine jelly of the type that carried a Victorian supper table, and the technique is all in the egg-white raft and the unsqueezed bag. Two things need translating: the measures are imperial, and modern gelatine is stronger than what Cassell's cook had.
- Imperial measuresAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so three-quarters of a pint is 15 fl oz (about 425 ml) and the finished quart is 40 fl oz (about 1.14 litres). Using US measures throughout gives a smaller, slightly firmer jelly, which is no disaster.
- Gelatine strengthOne ounce (28 g) of gelatine per imperial quart suited the sheet and shred gelatine of the period, whose strength varied. Modern powdered gelatine is standardised and generally sets harder for its weight; around 20-22 g, or roughly ten leaves of standard leaf gelatine, should still turn out of a mould cleanly.
- IsinglassIsinglass is a collagen extracted from the swim bladders of sturgeon and related fish, sold in shreds and sheets for jellies and for fining wine and beer. It is generally reckoned to set softer and more tenderly than gelatine. It is no longer a grocery item, though brewing suppliers still stock it; use gelatine and expect a firmer result.
- The hinge: never squeeze the bagThe instruction not to press the jelly-bag is the whole point of the recipe. The egg-white raft holds the cloudy matter; force the liquid through and you push that sediment into the jelly and it goes dull. Let it drip, and if the first run is cloudy, pour it back through the same raft.
- Jelly-bag substituteA double layer of scalded muslin or a fine cloth in a sieve set over a bowl does the job. Wringing it out in boiling water first, as directed, stops the jelly setting in the fibres and slowing the flow.
- The quarter-hour boilRead this as the total time on the fire while the raft forms and settles, not fifteen minutes of hard boiling. Prolonged boiling weakens gelatine's setting power and drives off the wine aroma the dish exists for; bring it up until it rises in the pan, then draw it back.
- Wine and sugarSherry or Marsala still works exactly as described. Raisin wine, a home-made country wine, has effectively vanished, so use a fortified wine or a sweet white, and taste before setting, since a modern dry sherry will give a much less sweet jelly than the recipe assumes. "Roughly-powdered" sugar means caster or superfine, not icing sugar.
- Moulds and settingRinsing the mould in cold water, as directed, helps release without dulling the surface. Four to six hours in the refrigerator sets it. To unmould, dip the base in warm water for a few seconds and invert onto a wetted dish so you can slide the jelly into place.
- YieldA quart serves six to eight as a dessert, or fills eight to ten small glasses if you break it up with a spoon as described.
Clear wine jelly was one of the set pieces of nineteenth-century dessert cookery, valued less for flavour than for transparency, which was proof of a careful cook. Before commercial gelatine became cheap, the setting agent was either calf's-foot stock boiled down over hours or isinglass, the dried swim-bladder collagen long associated with Russia though by the later nineteenth century drawn from Brazil, India and elsewhere as well, and used equally by brewers to fine their beer. The clarification is a teachable technique rather than a dish: whisked egg white and crushed shell are heated with the liquid until they coagulate into a raft that traps every particle, the same method that turns cloudy stock into consommé. Such jellies had a place in the sickroom, and books of the period recommended them to invalids as something nourishing and easy to swallow, which is one reason a quart-sized recipe with a costing of a shilling appears in a household dictionary at all.