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Punch Jelly
Ingredients for four Quarts.
Three quarts of Water.
Half a pint of Milk Punch.
Half a pint of Rum.
Half a pint of Marsala.
Three gills of Lemon-juice.
Six rinds of Lemon.
Eleven ounces of Gelatine.
One inch of Cinnamon.
Three Whites of Eggs whipped and the shells crushed.
Twenty-four ounces of Loaf Sugar. Ingredients for one Quart.
One pint of Water.
Quarter of a pint of Milk Punch. Quarter of a pint of Rum.
Quarter of a pint of Marsala.
One gill and a half of Lemonjuice.
Two rinds of Lemon.
Two and a half ounces of Gelatine. Half an inch of Cinnamon.
Two Whites of Eggs whipped and the shells crushed.
Six ounces of Loaf Sugar.
Put all these ingredients together into a stewpan, whisk them over the fire till they boil, then draw them off the fire, and let them stand by the side of it for about five minutes; strain through a clean cloth, scalded and put on a soup-stand, and it is then ready for use.
A Wine Jelly from Calves' Feet.
Ingredients.
A Victorian clarified punch jelly, built on the same egg-white raft technique as a consommé. Two things decide whether it works: the clarification and the gelatine weight.
- Do not disturb the raftWhisk only until the pan reaches boiling point, then stop entirely. The whipped whites and crushed shells rise as a coagulated raft that traps the cloudiness; stirring after that breaks it up and the jelly will be murky. The five minutes off the heat lets it settle before straining.
- StrainingScald the cloth first — a jelly bag or doubled muslin — or it will give the jelly a laundry taste. Let it drip through undisturbed and never squeeze. If the first run is not brilliant, pour it back through the same cloth and its own raft. The "soup-stand" appears to be a stand or trivet to hold the scalded cloth over the receiving vessel.
- Gills and pintsThese are imperial measures: a pint is 20 fl oz, a gill 5 fl oz. Three gills of lemon juice is 15 fl oz, about 1¾ US cups, which needs a great many lemons.
- The one-quart column does not add upThe quantities given for a single quart are not a quarter of the four-quart list — a pint of water plus three quarter-pints of spirits and wine and 1½ gills of juice already exceeds a quart before setting. Treat the four-quart set as the reliable one and scale it yourself if you want less.
- Gelatine strengthNineteenth-century gelatine was less consistent than modern gold-leaf sheets or powder, and probably weaker. Eleven ounces to four quarts would set modern gelatine very stiff indeed, closer to a rubber ball than a dessert; a firm but spoonable jelly needs considerably less — perhaps a third to a half that weight — and a small test setting in a saucer is worth the trouble before you commit the whole batch.
- Milk punchNot milk with punch in it. Milk punch is spirit, citrus and sugar into which hot milk is poured; the milk curdles, is strained out, and leaves a clear, silky, long-keeping punch. You will need to make it separately, or substitute more rum and lemon and accept a sharper result.
- Loaf sugar and MarsalaLoaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone — use ordinary granulated by weight. Marsala should be a dry or semi-dry bottling; a sweet cream Marsala will push the jelly over, given the 24 oz of sugar already present.
- Alcohol and flavourBoiling the whole mixture, spirits included, drives off some of the alcohol and dulls the aromatics. Part of the rum and the lemon rind can be reserved and stirred in after straining, while the jelly is still warm, for a livelier flavour.
- YieldFour quarts fills a large mould generously and would serve twenty or more.
Punch jelly belongs to the Victorian cold-sweet repertoire, where a clear, glittering jelly turned out of a fluted mould was a centrepiece of a ball supper or a summer buffet. Its ancestor is calves'-foot jelly — the recipe that follows this one in the book is exactly that — the laborious process of boiling feet for their gelatine, clarifying the stock with egg white and shell, and flavouring it with wine and lemon. Commercial sheet gelatine, widely available by the second half of the century, cut out the feet but kept the clarification ritual intact, which is why a dessert made from packet gelatine is still treated here like a consommé. The milk punch in the ingredient list is older still: clarified milk punch was a fashionable eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century drink, valued because straining out the curdled milk left a spirit that kept for years in bottle. Books of this kind gave quantities in two columns so that the same dish could be produced on different scales.