Home › Cold Desserts › Rhubarb Jelly
Rhubarb Jelly
Skin and cut one pound of rhubarb in small pieces. Put into a saucepan with one cup of sugar and a small piece of fresh ginger root and cook slowly until soft, but not broken. Soak two tablespoons of granulated gelatine in one-half cup of cold water until soft, then strain into the hot rhubarb, with two tablespoons of lemon juice. Mold, chill and serve with a garnish of whipped cream.
A plain gelatine mold of the sort that filled the cold-dessert chapter of every early twentieth-century American cookbook. The only real difficulty is the gelatine, which is measured on an older scale than ours.
- Gelatine, convertedTwo tablespoons of granulated gelatine is roughly two to three of today's quarter-ounce envelopes, somewhere in the region of 15-20 g depending how the powder packs. That is enough to set several cups of liquid firmly; against one pound of rhubarb and its syrup it will give a stiff, sliceable jelly meant to be unmolded, not a soft spoon dessert. Cut to a single envelope if you want it tender.
- "Strain into the hot rhubarb"The softened gelatine goes into the fruit while it is still hot off the heat, and the straining catches undissolved grains. Stir until no granules remain on the back of the spoon, then add the lemon juice; gelatine set into a lumpy base will never firm evenly.
- Only the stalksRhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid in quantity and are not eaten; trim them off and discard. "Skin" means pulling away the coarse outer strings from thick, late-season stalks. Slender spring rhubarb needs no peeling.
- Cook it barely"Soft, but not broken" is the hinge. Rhubarb collapses into threads soon after it goes tender, and once it does the jelly is cloudy pulp rather than pieces suspended in a clear set. Keep the heat low, do not stir much, and pull it at the first sign of give.
- No added waterThe sugar draws enough juice out of the rhubarb to make its own syrup, so start it in a heavy pan over low heat and let it come slowly. A splash of water at the beginning only prevents scorching in a thin pan.
- Fresh ginger rootA small piece, peeled and best left whole so it can be fished out before molding; the recipe does not say to remove it, but it is easily done. Ground ginger is a poor stand-in for the fresh root here.
- Molding and chillingRinse the mold with cold water rather than oiling it, and chill at least four hours, better overnight. To turn it out, dip the mold briefly in warm water and invert onto a plate that has been wetted, which lets you slide the jelly into position.
- YieldServes four to six, depending on the mold. The whipped cream should be unsweetened or barely sweetened: the jelly already carries a full cup of sugar.
Rhubarb reached American kitchens as a garden plant before it was a market crop, which is why nineteenth-century books call it pie plant and treat it as the first thing worth eating from the spring garden, ahead of any real fruit. Its sharpness and its juiciness, low in pectin, made it a natural for the gelatine molds that became fashionable once granulated gelatine, sold in packets rather than boiled from calves' feet, put a set dessert within reach of a cook with no time and no stockpot. Books of this period devote whole chapters to such jellies, which displayed well on a sideboard and could be made a day ahead and held in the icebox. The fresh ginger root is the older touch here, a pairing with rhubarb that still works better than any of the spices that later replaced it.