Jelly
No doubt the counterblast of Baron Liebig against gelatine and jelly was much needed. The world had an exaggerated notion of the value of jelly as nutriment. The counterblast of the chemist was aided by the discovery that gelatine is often derived from obnoxious sources such as horses' hoofs. The consequence is that jelly has gone very much out of fashion. This is a pity; for whatever the chemists may say-and their results, as may be seen under the head of Gelatine, are by no means clear-the palate enjoys a good calf's-foot jelly, and we are not yet so corrupted by civilisation that we cannot afford to be ruled by the promptings of nature. A sick man will often swallow with enjoyment a calf's-foot jelly Felly when he can take nothing else. "It cannot do you any good," says the chemist, "because I cannot find it a place in my scale of diet." All the sick man can say is" I like it-my stomach will tolerate this jelly when it can tolerate nothing else. No chemist has ever yet been able to express in figures the good that coffee does, or tea; and when I can take a good jelly with pleasure, why should I refuse it merely because the chemist is at fault with his weights and measures, cannot find gelatine in the blood, and cannot tell what part it plays in the body, where nevertheless for some useful purpose it abounds?"
Calf"s-foot Jelly.-Jelly can be made from bones, from hartshorn, from isinglass, from prepared gelatine, from moss. The best, however, is made from meat, and the most expeditious from calves' feet. Calves' feet are extremely useful in this way, and may as opportunity serves be helped out with knuckle of veal, pig's skin, or any other gelatinous substance at hand. Under the head of Aspic will be found a receipt for calf's-foot jelly flavoured with vegetables, to be eaten with cold meat. The same receipt, barring the vegetables, holds for what is commonly called calf's-foot jelly-a sweetened jelly which belongs to the entremets. When the calf's feet have been boiled down, and the liquor has been passed through a sieve as well as freed from grease, sugar is added, and spices such as cinnamon and coriander seeds. All this is dissolved over the fire, together with half a bottle of sherry (but some prefer rum, punch, or noyau), the juice of six and zest of two lemons. The liquor is then clarified with whites of eggs, and it is tested for strength. If it is not strong enough some isinglass is added, or else some perfectly trustworthy gelatine; it is then passed through a jelly-bag and left to set in a mould.
English cooks boast of calf's-foot jelly as their own peculiar invention, and the French freely accord this glory Ferusalem Artichoke to the English kitchen. But here is a refinement which must be left to the learned to decide upon. There is a sect of philosophers who declare that jelly in a mould is not nearly so nice as the same jelly broken up and served in fragments.
Another refinement. It makes a very pretty combination with good cream, and perhaps it may be well and of good omen to give rest to the shade of Baron Liebig by adding the nourishment of cream to the no nourishment of jelly.
Again a refinement-but this is more for the eye than for the taste. Carême introduced the practice of serving this jelly when flavoured with oranges in the orange skins, divided in half. But in orange jelly there is no wine, and very often no calves' feet. It is made mostly with isinglass, dissolved in a great deal of the juice and a little of the zest of oranges.
Meat Jelly is chiefly made from veal, because it is most gelatinous. To every pound of veal add a calf's foot, half a pound of the leg of beef, and half a pound of the rind of fresh pork-in short, pigskin. Make a broth of this in the ordinary way, using the smallest quantity of water which is considered allowable-say a pint to a pound; add vegetables and salt; see that it has been well skimmed ; simmer it for three hours; and strain it through a napkin. If there is any doubt as to its strength for jelly, test it on ice, and if it is not stiff enough, reduce it. Lastly, clarify it. Here is a clear white jelly for use in all the white preparations of food; as glaze and the gravies are used in the brown preparations.
Two related preparations are given here in the discursive style of the period: a sweetened calf's-foot jelly for the dessert course, and a savoury white meat jelly for use as a base. Neither is written as a modern recipe, and the sweet one in particular assumes you already know the proportions.
- The hinge: test the set before you mouldEverything depends on the strength of the liquor. The book's ice test — "test it on ice, and if it is not stiff enough, reduce it" — is given for the meat jelly; for the sweet jelly it says only that the liquor "is tested for strength", with isinglass or trustworthy gelatine added if it falls short. Either way, test before you commit it to a mould, or you will not know until it is too late.
- Quantities are genuinely absentThe sweet jelly gives no weight of sugar, no number of feet and no volume of stock. The flavourings quoted (half a bottle of sherry, six lemons' juice, two lemons' zest) imply a sizeable batch, of the order of two quarts, but the book does not say so and any yield figure for a pair of calves' feet is an estimate rather than a documented rule. Treat the sugar as to taste.
- Calves' feet and pigskinBoth are still sold, but usually by a proper butcher or a halal or Latin American market rather than a supermarket. Ask for the feet split lengthways. Pork rind should be fresh, not cured, or the jelly will taste of bacon.
- Simmering timeThe three hours given for the meat jelly is enough for a veal-and-beef broth, but feet and rind want longer — four to six hours of bare simmering to convert the collagen. Keep it below a rolling boil throughout or the jelly clouds and no amount of clarifying will fix it.
- Isinglass, hartshorn, mossIsinglass is dried fish swim bladder, historically sturgeon; hartshorn is shaved deer antler; and "moss" in receipts of this kind means carrageen (Irish moss) or Iceland moss. All three are gelling agents that have been superseded; the "perfectly trustworthy gelatine" the author grudgingly allows is what you will actually use. Reckon roughly 1/4 oz powdered gelatine per pint of liquid for a jelly firm enough to unmould, adjusting after a test set.
- NoyauNamed as an alternative flavouring, noyau (crème de noyaux) was traditionally made with the kernels of stone fruit. Modern bottlings are almond-flavoured and safe; do not attempt to steep bitter almonds or apricot kernels yourself.
- Clarifying and strainingWhisk the egg whites into the cool liquor before heating, bring it up gently without stirring once the raft forms, then ladle through a scalded jelly bag or a double thickness of muslin. Let it drip; squeezing the bag pushes the cloud straight back through.
- KeepingFor all the sugar and sherry, this is meat stock. Refrigerate and use within three or four days, and do not leave a moulded jelly standing at room temperature through a long meal.
- ServingA large mould will serve eight to ten, depending on how much liquor you end up with. The book's suggestion of breaking the set jelly into fragments, or combining it with cream, is worth taking seriously — chopped jelly catches the light better than a smooth turned-out shape.
The essay opens in the middle of a Victorian quarrel. Justus von Liebig, the German chemist whose name still sits on a meat extract, had argued that gelatine contributes nothing usable to nutrition, and since calf's-foot jelly was the standard food of the English sickroom — spooned into invalids who could keep down nothing else — the finding landed hard. Kettner's Book of the Table, published in 1877 and generally attributed to the journalist E. S. Dallas, takes the cook's side against the laboratory, and the aside about hooves points to contemporary suspicion of cheap commercial gelatine of uncertain origin. The claim that calf's-foot jelly is an English invention, and that the French conceded it, is the book's own assertion rather than something independently established; so too is the attribution to Carême of setting orange jelly back into halved orange skins. What the entry preserves is a moment when jelly was slipping out of fashion from both the invalid's tray and the dessert course.