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Crystal Jelly
Pare off the rind of one large lemon. Boil in one pint water with one ounce isinglass; add one pound sugar and one cup pale wine. As soon as the isinglass is dissolved, strain through a muslin and let it stand till cold. Grate the rind of another lemon and let it stand in the juice of the two lemons for a short time. Strain all in a bowl, and whisk it till it begins to stiffen. Pour in moulds.--Mrs. E. P. G.
A wine jelly built on isinglass, the fish-derived gelatin that preceded commercial leaf and powdered gelatine. The substitution is the whole problem here; everything else is straightforward.
- IsinglassDried sturgeon or cod swim bladder, sold in sheets or shreds and used as a clarifying and setting agent. Powdered or leaf gelatine does the same job, but the strengths are not comparable ounce for ounce, so treat the one ounce as unusable as a direct conversion and instead follow the gelatine package's guidance for setting the total liquid: one pint of water plus one cup of wine plus the juice of two lemons, roughly a pint and a half.
- Pale wineA dry sherry, Madeira, or a light white wine. "Pale" is doing real work: a red or a tawny fortified wine would ruin the clarity the name of the dish promises.
- Rind, not zestThe first lemon is pared in wide strips with no white pith, which infuses the syrup without clouding it. The second lemon's rind is grated and steeped raw in the juice for aroma, then strained out.
- StrainingMuslin is specified because isinglass jellies were expected to be transparent. Wet the cloth first, let the jelly drip rather than squeezing it, and strain twice if the first pass runs cloudy.
- The whiskingBeating the jelly as it begins to thicken aerates it and turns it opaque and pale, which is at odds with the name. If you want an actually crystalline jelly, skip the whisk and pour the strained liquid straight into the moulds while it is still fluid.
- "Till it begins to stiffen"The window is narrow. Chill the strained mixture until it has the consistency of unbeaten egg white, then whisk; too early and the froth collapses, too late and it sets into lumps that will not mould smoothly.
- Moulding and turning outRinse the moulds with cold water rather than oiling them. Four to six hours in the refrigerator sets it; dip the mould briefly in warm water to release.
- YieldAbout a pint and a half of jelly, serving six as a light dessert. The original assumes small individual moulds or one shaped centrepiece.
Isinglass reached British and American kitchens largely from Russia, where it was prepared from the swim bladders of sturgeon in the Caspian and Volga fisheries, and it was valued for two things at once: it set a jelly and it clarified liquids, which is why brewers used it as well as cooks. A transparent wine jelly was a display dish in the nineteenth century, since achieving it meant either isinglass or the long, fuel-hungry labour of boiling down calves' feet and clearing the stock with egg white. By the time Housekeeping in Old Virginia appeared (first published 1878, with printings dated 1879), packaged gelatine was becoming available alongside both methods, and recipes like this one — contributed, as many in the book were, by a Virginia housekeeper identified only by her initials — sit on the hinge between the old ingredient and the new. The whisking step points toward a related family of dishes, the frothed "whips" and Spanish creams, in which the same gelled base is beaten to increase its bulk.