Invalid's Jelly
INGREDIENTS for 3 pints of jelly. -6 shanks of mutton, 3 pints of water, a bunch of sweet herbs, pepper and salt to taste, 3 blades of mace, 1 onion, 1 lb. of lean beef, a crust of bread toasted brown. AVERAGE COST, 2s. 6d.
Soak the shanks in plenty of water for some hours, and scrub them well; put them, with the beef and other ingredients, into a saucepan with the water, and let them simmer very gently for 5 hours. Strain the broth, and when cold, take off the fat.
It may be eaten either warmed up or cold as a jelly.
TIME.-5 hours.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A gelatine-rich broth set by its own collagen, from the sickroom chapter of Beeton. The whole point is the shank bones, so do not substitute boneless meat.
- What "shanks of mutton" meansThese are the lower leg of the sheep, sold cheaply to Victorian households and rich in collagen and cartilage. Ask a butcher for lamb shanks, sawn lamb leg bones, or lamb trotters.
- The hinge: gentle heat"Simmer very gently" is the instruction that decides whether you get clear jelly or cloudy grey soup. Keep the surface barely trembling at around 190F, never a rolling boil, which emulsifies fat into the liquid and clouds it permanently.
- Water levelThree pints over five hours will reduce well below three pints of finished jelly. Use a tight lid and a low burner, or top up with hot water partway through if you want the stated yield.
- Sweet herbsA bunch of sweet herbs is a bouquet garni: parsley stalks, thyme, a bay leaf, tied with string. Beeton's readers would also have understood marjoram or savoury as fair game.
- Blades of maceWhole mace, the lacy aril of the nutmeg, sold in flat blades. Ground mace can substitute at a pinch, but blades vary in size and ground spice will cloud the broth; whole is worth seeking out.
- The toasted crustA slice of bread toasted almost black adds colour and a faint roasted note to a broth that is otherwise pale, since nothing here is browned first. It is a colouring trick, not a thickener.
- SettingChill overnight. Well-made shank broth sets firm without added gelatine; if it does not, it was under-simmered or over-diluted. Lift the cold fat cap off in one disc before serving.
- Yield and keepingAbout 3 pints, six to eight small sickroom servings. Refrigerate and use within three days, or freeze in portions; the fat cap protects it only in an unheated Victorian larder, not in practice today.
Beeton devotes a substantial run of pages to "invalid cookery" -- beef tea, arrowroot, gruels, calf's-foot jelly -- a category that reflects a period in which the sick were nursed at home and the household cook was expected to feed them on doctor's principles. Nineteenth-century medical opinion held that concentrated meat essences carried the strength of the meat in a form a weak stomach could absorb, an idea that outlasted its evidence and helped make commercial beef extracts a Victorian fortune. Shank bones were among the cheapest things a butcher sold, and their gelatine was the reason: it gave broth the body and set that were read as nourishment. The savoury jelly here is the plain cousin of calf's-foot jelly, which was sweetened, wined and given to convalescents as a treat rather than a meal.