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French Gelatine (Two Whites of Eggs whipped)
Two Whites of Eggs whipped and the shells crushed.
A few drops of Cochineal.
Four ounces of Sugar.
Put all these ingredients into a stewpan and whisk over the fire till it boils, then draw it off, let it stand at the side of the fire for about five minutes, strain as usual, add a few drops of cochineal to improve the colour, set as required, and it is ready for use.
This is a clarifying and colouring method rather than a complete recipe: what is described is the egg-white raft used to clear a sweet gelatine jelly, and the printed text assumes you already have the gelatine and liquid in the pan. Read it as one stage in a larger process.
- What is missingNo gelatine, water, wine or lemon appears in the list, yet the dish is called French Gelatine. The printed text appears to assume the pan already holds the dissolved gelatine and liquid, to which the whites, shells and sugar are added. Taken literally, the ingredients given would produce nothing but sweet pink meringue scrapings.
- The hinge: stop whisking at the boilWhisk steadily only until the surface lifts and boils. Once the coagulated whites have risen into a raft, further stirring shreds it and the cloudiness goes straight back into the liquid. Drawing the pan to the side for five minutes lets the raft firm before straining.
- Crushed shellsThe shells are traditionally held to give the albumen something to cling to and to help carry fine sediment upward. Use the shells of the same eggs, rinsed, and crush them coarsely.
- CochinealA carmine colouring made from the dried scale insect Dactylopius coccus, sold in this period as a liquid tincture. It is still available as carmine or E120 and is a recognised allergen for a small number of people; any red food colouring gives the same effect. Note that the recipe adds it twice, before boiling and again after straining, the second addition being simply 'to improve the colour'.
- "Strain as usual"Through a scalded jelly bag or a double thickness of muslin in a sieve, without pressing. Pour the first cloudy run back through the bag and let gravity do the rest; squeezing forces sediment through and undoes the clarification.
- Stewpan and quantitiesA stewpan here is a broad, straight-sided pan; a non-reactive one is safest. Four ounces of sugar is roughly half a cup, a modest amount for the quantity of liquid such a clearing would normally serve.
- "Set as required"Rinse the mould in cold water, fill, and chill until firm, several hours for a small mould and longer for a large one.
Clarifying jelly with whipped whites and crushed shells is the old confectioner's method, inherited from the isinglass and calf's-foot jellies of the eighteenth century, where the stock came out cloudy and grey and had to be made brilliant before it was fit for a dinner table. Commercial sheet gelatine came in time to replace the long boiling of calves' feet, but the clearing stage survived because clarity was the whole point of the dish: a moulded jelly was often said to be judged on whether a candle or a window could be seen through it, though this is more a period commonplace than a documented standard. The name French gelatine may have something to do with the period's habit of attaching "French" to refined leaf gelatines and to classically trained kitchen practice, in contrast to home-rendered stock, but that is conjecture. The cochineal is characteristic too, a pink or rose jelly being one of the standard colours set in layers or in alternating moulds for a cold sweet course.