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Prunes in Jelly
Soak two heaping dessertspoons of granulated gelatine in one cup of cold water for one hour. Add one cup of boiling water, one cup of sugar, one cup of white wine or sherry and the juice of one lemon. Cut twelve cooked prunes in quarters. Have ready a mold wet in cold water. Strain into it enough jelly to give about one inch in thickness. Let this harden, add the prunes at equal distances apart, then a second layer of jelly, and when that has hardened, repeat the layers till the mold is filled. When hard, turn out the jelly and serve with whipped cream.
A straightforward wine jelly built in layers around cooked prunes. The only real difficulties are the gelatine measurement and the patience the layering demands.
- The gelatineTwo heaping dessertspoons of granulated gelatine is roughly two envelopes (about 1/2 oz, 14 g) — enough to set the roughly three cups of liquid here firmly enough to unmold. Modern gelatine blooms in 5-10 minutes rather than an hour, but a long soak does no harm.
- DessertspoonA dessertspoon sits between a teaspoon and a tablespoon, about 2 teaspoons. "Heaping" makes this approximate; if in doubt, weigh out 1/2 oz of powdered gelatine.
- Dissolve, do not boilAdd the boiling water to the bloomed gelatine and stir until no granules remain before the sugar and wine go in. Gelatine loses setting power if actually boiled, and undissolved grains give a gritty base layer.
- The alcoholA full cup of wine or sherry in about three cups of liquid is a lot, and the alcohol is never cooked off. The jelly will taste distinctly of sherry and is not for children.
- Layering timeEach layer needs to be set but still tacky before the next is poured, or the layers slide apart when unmolded. Expect 30-45 minutes per inch in the refrigerator, and keep the remaining jelly at room temperature so it does not gel in the bowl.
- The prunes"Cooked prunes" means dried prunes simmered in water until plump, then drained and cooled well. Wet, warm fruit will thin the layer it sits on.
- UnmoldingWetting the mold, as directed, is the old method; dipping the mold briefly in hot water and inverting onto a chilled plate is more reliable. A 1-quart mold suits this quantity.
- YieldSix servings, with whipped cream as the original suggests — unsweetened, since the jelly itself carries a full cup of sugar.
Moulded wine jellies were the showpiece of the late nineteenth-century cold dessert table, and their popularity owes much to the spread of packaged granulated gelatine around 1890 — though prepared sheet and powdered gelatines had been sold for decades before that. Earlier, a cook wanting jelly boiled calves' feet or isinglass for hours and then clarified the result with egg white — work that put clear jelly firmly in the category of a display dish. Packaged gelatine reduced it to an hour's soaking and a strainer, and cookbooks of this period responded with page after page of layered, fruited, wine-flavored jellies. Prunes appear here because they were a cheap, reliable, year-round fruit of the American pantry: dried California prunes were shipping in quantity by the 1890s, and a household could produce a fruit dessert in February without a hothouse or a can.