Cream Jelly
Two measures of stock, one of cream; sweeten and flavor to the taste. Pour in moulds to congeal.
This is a ratio rather than a recipe: two parts jelly stock to one part cream, sweetened and flavored as you like. Everything depends on what the "stock" is, since the book assumes you already have a pot of it.
- What "stock" means hereNot meat broth in the savory sense but the clarified gelatin stock of the period, made by long-boiling calf's feet or, increasingly, from packaged sheet gelatin and, later, granulated gelatin. A modern stand-in is a gelatin liquid of roughly one envelope (about 2 1/4 tsp) of powdered gelatin per 2 cups of liquid; for a mold that will stand when turned out, use somewhat more.
- The 2:1 ratio, in real amountsTwo cups jelly stock to one cup cream makes about three cups, enough for six small molds. Because the cream dilutes the setting liquid by half again, the stock must be made firmer than you would want to eat on its own or the jelly will not stand when turned out.
- "Measures" is genuinely vagueThe original names no unit at all, only proportion. Any consistent cup, glass or ladle works, but there is no way to recover the author's intended total volume from the text.
- Temperature is the hingeThe stock must be cool and syrupy but still liquid, and the cream at room temperature, before they meet. Hot gelatin stock hitting cold cream causes the gelatin to seize into threads; hot stock will also thin and sometimes curdle cream that has any acidity in the flavoring.
- Sweetening and flavoringFigure 1/4 to 1/3 cup sugar for three cups of mixture, dissolved in the warm stock rather than stirred into the cold. Period flavorings were vanilla, rosewater, bitter-almond extract, sherry or brandy; if you use wine or citrus, add it at the end and taste, as acid weakens a gelatin set.
- Keeping it from separatingCream-and-gelatin mixtures layer as they chill, with a pale fatty stratum rising to the top. Stir gently over ice until the mixture just begins to thicken, then pour into molds so the cream stays suspended.
- Molding and unmoldingRinse the molds with cold water rather than oiling them. Chill four hours at minimum, overnight for anything larger than a single serving, then dip the mold briefly in warm water and invert onto a cold, slightly wetted plate so the jelly can be slid into place.
- ServingServe cold, on its own or with stewed or fresh fruit. Eat within two days; a dairy jelly does not keep the way a clear fruit jelly does.
Cream jelly belongs to the long family of molded gelatin desserts—blancmange, Dutch flummery, bavarian cream—that dominated genteel American and British dessert tables through the nineteenth century, when a clear, quivering, well-turned-out mold was proof of a competent kitchen. Its extreme brevity here is characteristic of Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), which Marion Cabell Tyree assembled from contributions by some 250 Virginia housekeepers: the recipes were written by cooks for cooks who already knew the household routines, and calf's-foot jelly stock was one of those routines, boiled down, clarified with egg white and strained through a flannel bag on a schedule that no one felt obliged to explain. Sweetened jellies also carried a reputation as invalid food, easy to swallow and thought strengthening, which is why cookbooks of the period file them near both the desserts and the sickroom dishes.