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Jellies, Bottled, How to Mould
Bottled jellies, of which some of the best we think are sold by the firms of Crosse and Blackwell, and Goodall, Backhouse and Co., are very convenient and easily prepared sweets. To mould them, uncork the bottle; place it in a saucepan of hot water until the jelly is reduced to a OPEN MOULD. liquid state; taste it, to ascertain whether it is sufficiently flavoured, and if not add a little wine. Pour the jelly into moulds which have been soaked in water; let it set and turn it out by placing the mould in hot water for a minute; then wipe the outside, put a dish on the top and turn it over quickly. The jelly should then slip easily away from the mould and be quite firm. It may be garnished as taste
This is a method rather than a formula: it assumes you have bought a bottle of ready-made, fully flavoured jelly that needs only melting and setting. The nearest modern equivalent is a packet of jelly crystals or leaf gelatine plus fruit juice, and the moulding technique transfers to either.
- What bottled jelly wasA concentrated sweetened, flavoured gelatine sold in a corked glass bottle, ready to liquefy and set. Nothing sold under that name survives; a supermarket jelly tablet made up with slightly less water than the packet directs gives a comparably firm set.
- Melt gently, do not boilThe bottle goes into a pan of hot water off or barely on the heat. Gelatine loses strength if held near boiling, and a jelly that has been boiled may never set firmly enough to turn out.
- Uncork before heatingThe instruction to uncork first is not incidental. Heating a sealed bottle builds pressure, and Victorian corks were driven in tight.
- Setting strength for a turned-out jellyAn open mould needs a stiffer jelly than one eaten from a glass. If you are making it from scratch, something in the region of 20 g of leaf gelatine per litre of liquid, against around 15 g for a spooned jelly, though sheet strengths differ between brands and it is worth testing a small amount first.
- Wetting the mouldSoaking the mould in cold water leaves a film that helps the jelly release. A metal mould works better than ceramic or glass because it conducts heat quickly when you dip it.
- Turning outA minute in hot water is the outside limit; ten to twenty seconds is often enough, and a longer dip risks melting the surface. Wipe the mould dry, invert the dish over it and reverse the pair in one movement.
- Adding wineThe recipe says only 'a little wine'; sherry, Madeira and sweet white wine are the sorts of thing period jelly recipes tend to call for. Add it to the warm liquid before moulding, and keep the total added liquid small, since alcohol weakens the set.
- ChillingVictorian kitchens set jellies in a cold larder or on ice, which took hours. A refrigerator will set a pint mould in about four hours and a large one overnight.
Bottled jelly was a labour-saving product of the Victorian grocery trade, and its appeal is obvious once you know what it replaced: a proper jelly meant boiling calf's feet for hours, or clarifying isinglass, then straining the result through a flannel jelly bag. Crosse and Blackwell, the London preserving and pickling house, and Goodall, Backhouse and Co. of Leeds, best remembered for Yorkshire Relish and for their baking powder, both traded on exactly this kind of domestic shortcut. The moulded jelly itself, garnished and glittering on a dish, remained a fixture of the supper table and the invalid's tray well into the twentieth century.