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Coffee Jelly
1/2 box gelatine or 2 tablespoons granulated gelatine 1/2 cup cold water 1 cup boiling water 1/3 cup sugar 2 cups boiled coffee Make same as Lemon Jelly. Serve with sugar and cream. Cider Jelly 1/2 box gelatine or 2 tablespoons granulated gelatine 1/2 cup cold water 1 cup boiling water 2 cups cider Sugar Make same as Lemon Jelly.
Wine Jelly I 1/2 box gelatine or 2 tablespoons granulated gelatine 1/2 cup cold water 1 2/3 cups boiling water 1 cup sugar 1 cup Sherry or Madeira wine 1/3 cup orange juice 3 tablespoons lemon juice Soak gelatine twenty minutes in cold water, dissolve in boiling water; add sugar, wine, orange juice, and lemon juice; strain, mould, and chill. If a stronger jelly is desired, use additional wine in place of orange juice.
Three moulded gelatine desserts built on the same method as the book's Lemon Jelly: soak, dissolve, sweeten, flavour, strain, chill. The proportions are the whole recipe, so getting the gelatine right is most of the work.
- The method being referred toLemon Jelly means: soak the gelatine twenty minutes in the cold water, dissolve it in the boiling water, stir in the sugar until it is gone, add the flavouring liquid, strain, pour into a mould and chill. The Wine Jelly entry spells this out in full and can be used as the template for the other two.
- Half a box of gelatineA box of the period held about an ounce of granulated gelatine, so half a box is roughly 1/2 ounce, which is why the alternative given here is 2 tablespoons -- the more useful figure. That is roughly two and a half envelopes of modern unflavoured gelatine, which sets about 3 1/2 cups of liquid to a firm, sliceable mould rather than a spoonable one.
- Never boil the gelatineThe boiling water goes onto the softened gelatine, not the other way round, and the mixture is not returned to the heat. Gelatine held at a boil loses setting power and the jelly turns slack.
- Boiled coffeeThis means coffee made by the old grounds-in-the-pot method, strong and fully extracted. Brew about double your usual strength, since two cups of it are being diluted by another cup and a half of water and sugar.
- CiderIn American books of this date cider usually means sweet unfermented apple cider, though the word was also used of the fermented drink and the recipe does not say which. The sugar is left unmeasured because cider varies; start with 1/3 cup and taste the warm mixture, remembering that cold dulls sweetness.
- Chilling and unmouldingFour hours in the refrigerator is the minimum for a small mould, overnight for a large one. Dip the mould to the rim in hot water for a few seconds and invert onto a wetted plate so the jelly can be slid into place.
- StrainingStraining through fine cloth is not fussiness. It catches undissolved gelatine grains and coffee sediment, which are what make an otherwise clear jelly cloudy.
- YieldThe coffee and cider jellies each make about 3 1/2 cups, serving six in small moulds or cups; the wine jelly, with more liquid and a full cup of sugar, makes rather more.
Moulded gelatine jellies were a fixture of the American dessert table from the 1890s onward, once packaged granulated gelatine made them a matter of measuring rather than of boiling calves' feet for hours and clarifying the result with egg white. The shift shows plainly in this recipe's wording, which offers a box or the loose granulated equivalent as though the reader might have either. Wine jelly was the older and more formal of the three, long served to invalids as well as at dinner, while coffee jelly, eaten with sugar and cream, was a New England favourite that appears in household cookbooks throughout the period. Cider jelly belongs to the same autumn economy as apple butter and boiled cider, a way of putting the press's output to use at the table.