Wine
1/2 box gelatine 1/2 cup cold water 1 pint boiling water 1 cup wine 1 cup sugar 1 lemon Soak the gelatine in cold water until soft. Add the boiling water, wine, sugar and lemon juice. Strain. Keep on ice until ready to serve.
This is a wine jelly — a clear molded gelatin dessert that was standard on late Victorian and Edwardian dinner tables. The measurements assume the granulated gelatine boxes of the day, which is the one thing that needs translating.
- Half a box of gelatineBoxes of the period generally held about an ounce, commonly divided into quarter-ounce envelopes, so half a box is roughly 2 envelopes, about 1 1/2 level tablespoons. That is enough to set the roughly 3 1/2 cups of liquid here firmly. If using sheet gelatine, 2 envelopes is roughly 6 to 8 sheets of gold-strength leaf.
- Do not boil the wineThe hinge of the recipe: the boiling water is what dissolves the bloomed gelatine, and everything else goes in off the heat. Heating the wine drives off both its aroma and its alcohol and leaves a flat, sugary jelly.
- Which wineA book of this period would most often mean sherry, Madeira or a light claret, though the recipe does not say. Sherry gives the familiar amber jelly; red wine gives a rose-colored one. A cup of wine in this volume is well under the level at which alcohol interferes with setting.
- SoakingFive minutes in the cold water is enough for granulated gelatine to swell; it should look like wet sand with no dry grains. Stir it into the boiling water until no specks remain against the side of the bowl before adding anything else.
- StrainStraining is not optional garnish — it catches lemon pulp, seeds and any undissolved gelatine, and a clear jelly is the entire point of the dish. Pour through a fine sieve or a double thickness of cheesecloth into the mold.
- "Keep on ice"An icebox ran roughly 45-50F, so this would have taken most of an afternoon. In a modern refrigerator allow 4 to 6 hours, or overnight for a large single mold.
- Unmolding and yieldRinse the mold with cold water before filling, and dip it briefly in warm water to release. Fills a 1-quart mold generously and serves 6, traditionally with whipped cream or a spoonful of custard.
Wine jelly belongs to the era when packaged granulated gelatine turned an aristocratic kitchen showpiece into a weeknight dessert. Earlier, clear jellies often meant boiling down calves' feet and clarifying the result with egg white and shell — a full day's work that only a well-staffed kitchen attempted, though prepared sheet and granulated gelatine were sold and used in recipes well before the 1890s. Once gelatine was sold dried in quarter-ounce papers, recipes like this one, measured in boxes rather than in calves' feet, became a common sight in promotional cookbooks and community collections in America. Jellies of this kind were also standard invalid cookery, given to convalescents on the widely held Victorian assumption that wine and gelatine were both strengthening; that is often why the same recipe turns up in the dessert chapter and again among the sickroom dishes. The Gold Medal Flour books were issued by the Washburn-Crosby milling company of Minneapolis, and a flourless dessert like this one sits in them simply because a household cookbook was expected to cover the whole dinner, not only the parts that used the sponsor's product.