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Two Bay-leaves (Rind and juice of one Lemon)
The rind and juice of one Lemon.
The Whites of two Eggs.
Half a gill of common Vinegar.
One tablespoonful of Chilli Vinegar.
Half a gill of Tarragon Vinegar.
One gill of Sherry.
Two quarts of Water.
Take two calves' feet and chop them into eight pieces. Wash them well in cold water, and put R them in a stewpan with sufficient cold water to cover them. Let them boil to blanch them; then pour the water off, and wash them again in cold water. Wash the stewpan and put the pieces of feet into it, with two quarts of water, and just bring it to the boil; watch it and skim it occasionally.
Add half a teaspoonful of salt and all the other ingredients, except the lemon, the eggs, and the vinegars. Let all boil gently for five hours.
Strain it off through a hair-sieve into a basin, and let it stand until perfectly cold: take off the fat, and wipe the top of the stock with a cloth dipped in hot water, to remove every particle of grease. Put the stock into a clean stewpan, with the lemonpeel and juice; also add the whipped whites of two eggs and the shells, the vinegars, and salt to taste. Whisk all on the fire until it boils; then draw the stewpan to the side of the fire, and let it stand for half an hour to form a crust. Take a clean soup cloth, and fix it on the stand; pour the contents into a cloth, and let it all run through into a basin. Let it pass through a second time slowly.
Scald a mould with boiling water, then rinse it in cold water; garnish the mould with fish or vegetables, according to taste, pour in the jelly carefully, and let it stand until cold, when turn out and serve.
Aspic Jelly from French Gelatine. Ingredients for the Pupils in the Practice Kitchen. (Four Quarts.) Three quarts of Water.
One pint of Sherry.
One gill of Malt Vinegar.
One gill of Tarragon Vinegar.
Half a gill of Chilli Vinegar.
Half a gill of Lemon-juice.
One Carrot, one Turnip, one Onion. One stick of Celery.
A teaspoonful of Salt.
This is a savoury aspic built the old way, from calves' feet rather than packet gelatine, then clarified with egg white. The ingredient list as printed is garbled — the page title supplies the two bay-leaves, and the vegetables named in the second version (carrot, turnip, onion, celery) are what "all the other ingredients" refers to.
- GillsIn British measure a gill is 5 fl oz, so half a gill is 2½ fl oz and a gill of sherry is a generous half cup. Two quarts is 80 fl oz, about 2.3 litres.
- The vinegars"Common vinegar" is most likely malt vinegar; the second list on the page names malt in the same position. Chilli vinegar and tarragon vinegar were commonly made by steeping whole dried chillies or fresh tarragon in vinegar; tarragon vinegar is still sold, chilli vinegar rarely is.
- Calves' feetTwo split calves' feet, five hours, yields a stock that sets hard on its own with no added gelatine. Ask a butcher to order and split them. If you substitute, use gelatine and a good veal stock — but then you are making the second recipe on the page, not this one.
- Blanch, and mean itThe first boil-and-discard is not optional. Feet throw a great deal of grey scum, and skipping it gives cloudy jelly that no amount of clarifying will rescue.
- The clarification is the hingeOnce the whisked whites and shells go in, whisk only until it boils, then stop touching it. Draw it to a bare tremble and leave the raft alone for the half hour; stirring or a rolling boil breaks the crust and clouds the whole batch. Ladle through the cloth rather than pouring the last of it in.
- Skim cold, not hotChilling overnight lets the fat set into a lid you can lift off whole. The hot-cloth wipe afterwards matters — a film of grease will dull the finished surface.
- Test the setBefore you commit the batch to a mould, chill a teaspoonful on a saucer for ten minutes. Calves' feet vary; if it is soft, reduce the strained stock a little and test again.
- The mouldScalding then rinsing cold is so the jelly releases cleanly. Set a thin layer first, arrange the garnish on it once tacky, then fill — otherwise everything floats to the top.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; after five hours' gentle boiling expect appreciably less than the two quarts of water you start with, so measure the strained stock before choosing a mould. Serve cold as a coating or setting for cooked fish, poultry, eggs or vegetables.
Aspic sat near the centre of late-Victorian and Edwardian "high class" cookery, where cold work was how a kitchen showed off: jelly clear enough to read through, poured in layers over sliced truffle, tongue or hard-boiled egg, and turned out unblemished. Before commercial gelatine was cheap and reliable, that clarity had to be extracted from calves' feet and then fought for with an egg-white raft, which is why the method here is so much longer than the ingredient list suggests. The reference to "the Pupils in the Practice Kitchen" in the second version places this book in the world of the training schools of cookery that spread through Britain from the 1870s onward, where recipes were scaled to four quarts and written to be executed by a class rather than a cook. The vinegars — malt, tarragon, chilli — do double duty, sharpening a stock that is otherwise bland and helping the jelly taste light rather than gluey.