Home › Recipes › Chocolate Jelly
Chocolate Jelly
1 pint of boiling water, 2 pinches of salt, 1 1/2 squares of Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate, 1/3 a package of gelatine, 2 level tablespoonfuls of sugar, 1 teaspoonful of vanilla.
Put the water, salt and chocolate in a saucepan. Cook, stirring until the chocolate melts, then let it boil for three or five minutes. Soften the gelatin in a little cold water and pour the boiling mixture over it. Stir until dissolved, then add sugar and vanilla. Pour into a mould and set aside to harden, serve with cream and powdered sugar or sweetened whipped cream.
A plain water-based gelatin set with unsweetened chocolate — closer to a firm chocolate water ice in texture than to a modern pudding, and deliberately under-sweetened because the cream served with it carries the sugar.
- The gelatine measure is the ambiguous oneBrands and package sizes for granulated gelatine around 1900 varied, so "1/3 a package" cannot be converted with confidence. A pint of liquid takes about one envelope (1/4 oz, roughly 2 1/4 teaspoons) of modern powdered gelatine for an ordinary set; use about an envelope and a half if you want it to stand up sharply out of the mould.
- Baker's Premium No. 1This was Walter Baker's unsweetened baking chocolate, sold in one-ounce squares. Any unsweetened baking chocolate substitutes directly, so 1 1/2 squares is 1 1/2 oz. Do not use semisweet or a chocolate bar — the sugar balance and the set will both shift.
- Two tablespoons of sugar is not a typoThe jelly is meant to be nearly bitter, with the sweetened cream making up the difference. If you plan to serve it plain, take it up to about 1/4 cup and taste the hot mixture before you add the gelatine.
- Boiling the chocolateThe recipe gives no reason for the three to five minutes of boiling; it at least ensures the chocolate is fully dispersed. Stir throughout, as chocolate and water will scorch on the bottom of the pan, and expect some loss of volume.
- Bloom, then dissolveSprinkle the gelatine over two or three tablespoons of cold water and leave it five minutes before the hot chocolate goes over it. Pouring boiling liquid onto dry granules gives you lumps that never dissolve.
- Setting timeThe original gives none. A pint mould needs at least four hours in the refrigerator, and overnight is safer. Chocolate solids may settle as the jelly sets, leaving the layers unevenly coloured -- stir the mixture once as it begins to thicken if that bothers you.
- UnmouldingRinse the mould in cold water before filling. To turn it out, dip the outside in warm — not hot — water for five seconds and invert onto a chilled plate.
- YieldA pint serves four modestly, in small moulds or one 2-cup form.
Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts, traced its chocolate mill to the 1760s and 70s and by the end of the nineteenth century was the best-known chocolate name in the United States; Premium No. 1 was its plain unsweetened cake chocolate. Booklets like Choice Recipes were given away or sold for a few cents to persuade households to keep chocolate on hand for more than a hot drink, and contributions were solicited from the era's cooking-school authorities ett McKenzie Hill and Maria Parloa among them. A chocolate jelly of this kind belongs to the American vogue for granulated gelatine, though packaged gelatines had been sold commercially well before it; earlier, a cook wanting a moulded dessert boiled calves' feet or isinglass. This one is set with water rather than milk, and sweetened almost entirely by the cream poured over it at table.