Strawberry Jelly
INGREDIENTS.
Strawberries, pounded sugar; to every pint of juice allow 1 1/4 oz. of Swinborne's of juice allow 1 1/4 oz. of Swinborne's gelatine. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 6d. a quart mould.
Pick the strawberries, put them into a pan, squeeze them well with a wooden spoon, add sufficient pounded sugar to sweeten them nicely, and let them remain for 1 hour, that the juice may be extracted; then add pint of water to every pint of juice. Strain the strawberry-juice and water through a bag; measure it, and to every pint allow 14 oz. of isinglass or gelatine, melted and clarified in 1/4 pint of water. Mix this with the juice; put the jelly into a mould, and set the mould in ice. A little lemon-juice added to the strawberry-juice improves the flavour of the jelly, if the fruit is very ripe; but it must be well strained before it is put to the other ingredients, or it will make the jelly muddy. TIME SEASONABLE in June, July and August.
A clear fruit jelly of the moulded Victorian type, set with gelatine rather than pectin. The whole thing turns on getting a clean, bright juice and using no more setting agent than the mould needs to stand up.
- The gelatine quantityThe ingredients list gives 1 1/4 oz. of gelatine to every pint of juice, but the method later calls for 14 oz. to the pint, which is an impossible amount; work from the smaller figure. Comparable Beeton fruit jellies call for something in the order of 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 oz of isinglass or gelatine to a pint of liquid. Modern powdered gelatine is stronger; roughly 1/2 oz (about 14 g) per pint (a scant 600 ml) should give a jelly firm enough to turn out.
- Swinborne's gelatine and isinglassSwinborne's was a Victorian branded refined gelatine; isinglass is a setting agent made from sturgeon swim bladders, now sold mainly for fining beer. Either can be replaced with leaf or powdered gelatine, bloomed in cold water rather than "melted and clarified".
- Pounded sugarThis is sugar crushed fine in a mortar — caster sugar is the direct equivalent. Granulated will dissolve too, given the hour of standing, but caster is quicker.
- Extracting the juiceCrushing the fruit with sugar and leaving it an hour draws out juice by osmosis without heat, which is why the flavour stays fresh and the colour bright. Do not be tempted to cook it; heat gives you a jam note instead of raw strawberry.
- Straining through a bagA jelly bag or a double thickness of muslin over a bowl, left to drip on its own. Squeezing or pressing the bag forces pulp through and clouds the finished jelly, which is the whole reason the recipe insists on straining the lemon juice too.
- Setting "in ice"A refrigerator does the work of the ice cave. Allow four to six hours in the mould, or overnight for a large one; dip the mould briefly in warm water to turn it out.
- Yield and servingA quart mould serves six to eight. Serve cold with cream, or with a few whole hulled strawberries around the base.
- SeasonFor most households in 1861 the strawberry season ran from June to August, as the recipe's SEASONABLE note indicates; forced fruit under glass existed but was a luxury. Out-of-season imported fruit is often low in flavour and acid, so the optional lemon juice becomes more useful, not less.
Moulded jellies were the display pieces of the Victorian dinner table, and their glassy clarity was a mark of a well-run kitchen — hence the repeated warnings here about anything that might make the jelly "muddy". Before commercial refined gelatines such as Swinborne's became widely available in the course of the nineteenth century, cooks set jellies with isinglass or with calf's-foot stock boiled down and clarified, both laborious and expensive; branded gelatine put moulded sweets within reach of ordinary middle-class households. The insistence on setting the mould in ice reflects a period when ice was cut in winter, stored in ice houses and sold by the block, and a jelly that stood up in warm weather was worth remarking on.