Home › Creams, Jellies and Cold Sweets › Claret Jelly
Claret Jelly
Ingredients for three Quarts.
Two quarts of Water.
One pint and a half of Claret.
Half a pint of Lemon-juice.
The rind of four Lemons.
One inch of Cinnamon and six Cloves. Ingredients for one Quart.
Three-quarters of a pint of Water. One pint of Claret.
Quarter of a pint of Lemonjuice.
The rind of one Lemon.
Two tablespoonfuls of Red Half an inch of Cinnamon and
Two sets of proportions for a moulded wine jelly, the larger making three quarts and the smaller one quart. Note that the two lists are not simple multiples of one another: the quart version is far stronger in both claret and lemon, so pick one and stay with it rather than averaging them.
- Pints and gillsThese are imperial measures: a pint is 20 fl oz, so a pint and a half of claret is about 850 ml, a little over one standard 750 ml bottle, and half a pint of lemon juice is roughly 1 1/4 cups, or the juice of some 6 to 8 lemons. A gill, where you meet it elsewhere in the book, is 5 fl oz.
- What claret meansIn British usage claret is red Bordeaux. Any dry, moderately tannic red will behave the same way; avoid anything oaky or sweet, since the jelly is already carrying sugar and a great deal of lemon.
- The setting agentThe proportions as given do not state the gelatine or isinglass. Victorian moulded jellies of this kind were set firm enough to turn out and hold a shape, which is considerably stiffer than a modern spoonable jelly, so work from a current wine-jelly recipe for the quantity rather than guessing.
- SugarNo sugar appears in the part of the lists printed here, though the second list breaks off mid-line and may have carried more. In any case this mixture needs a good deal of it: half a pint of lemon juice to two quarts of water is aggressively sour. Sweeten the water, lemon and spice infusion to taste before the wine goes in.
- Add the wine off the heatInfuse the lemon rind, cinnamon and cloves in the hot water, then take the pan off the stove before stirring in the claret. Boiling the wine drives off the aroma and leaves a flat, stewed flavour, and it also dulls the colour.
- Colour and clarityRed wine plus lemon juice tends to a dull purplish brown. Strain the finished liquid through a jelly bag or several layers of damp muslin without squeezing, and let it drip; a clear jelly reads far redder in the mould than a cloudy one.
- Rind, not pithPare the lemon rind thinly with a peeler. Any white pith carried over turns bitter during the infusion, and bitterness is the usual fault in this style of jelly.
- Yield and setting timeThree quarts fills a large mould and serves 15 to 20; the quart version serves 5 or 6. Allow at least 6 hours in the refrigerator, and overnight if it is to be turned out.
Claret is the long-standing British name for the red wines of Bordeaux, and wine jellies, which are considerably older than the late-Victorian period, sat in two places at once in such a household: on the dessert table, turned out of a fluted copper mould and eaten with cream or fruit, and in the sick-room, where a lightly wined jelly was considered strengthening and easy to keep down. Before commercial powdered gelatine became cheap and reliable, the setting came from isinglass or from calf's foot stock boiled down and clarified with egg white, which is why so much attention in books of this period goes to straining and clearing rather than to flavour. The heavy dose of lemon and the inch of cinnamon with six cloves place it in an older tradition still, one often traced to the spiced sweet wines of the seventeenth century, where spice and citrus rather than sugar alone were what made a drink or a dish feel rich.