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One Quart of Jelly
The rule is, for good quality: 1 quart of water. 1 1/2 ounces of gelatine. 8 ounces of sugar. 1 or 2 lemons 1 teaspoonful of whole mixed spices. 2 whites of eggs and the clean shells.
But a cupful of water more must be added to allow for evaporation and loss unless it is intended to add 1/2 pint of wine to the stock jelly produced. For jellies to serve ordinarily at dinner pour them in bright pans, an inch or more in depth and when set cut out little diamond shaped blocks and serve two such pieces of different color in the same saucer.
This is a base formula rather than a finished dessert: a clarified sweet gelatine stock, flavoured and coloured as wanted, then set shallow and cut. The two things that decide success are the gelatine ratio and how gently you treat the egg-white raft.
- The clarification is the hingeThe egg whites and crushed shells are whisked into the cold liquid, then brought slowly to a bare simmer without stirring once the raft begins to form. A hard boil breaks the coagulum and clouds the jelly permanently; strain through a scalded jelly bag or double muslin and do not press it.
- Gelatine strength has changedAn ounce and a half to the quart reflects the sheet and shred gelatines of the period, which were generally weaker and less consistent than today's. Most modern powdered gelatine is around 200-250 bloom, so 1 to 1 1/4 oz (about 28-35 g, or four to five 7 g envelopes) per quart should give a jelly firm enough to cut in blocks without turning rubbery.
- Whole mixed spicesRead this as a pinch each of cloves, stick cinnamon, allspice berries and a blade of mace, left whole so they are removed with the straining. A teaspoonful total is the whole amount, not each.
- The lemonsUse the pared zest of both and the strained juice of one to start; the acid also helps the clarification. Add juice cautiously, since too much softens the set.
- The extra cupful of waterThe instruction is for evaporation during clarification. If you are fortifying with wine, hold the water back so the finished volume still lands near a quart, and stir the half-pint of wine in off the heat after straining, or the alcohol and aroma go up the chimney.
- Setting and cuttingPour an inch deep into shallow metal pans, chill until fully set (four hours minimum, overnight is better), then cut diamonds with a knife dipped in hot water. Lift them with a thin offset spatula.
- Colour and yieldThe two-colour service implies two batches, or one stock jelly divided and tinted or flavoured separately -- one with wine, one with a fruit juice, say. Depending on how small the diamonds are cut, a quart will give on the order of 40 to 50 pieces, or roughly 20 to 25 saucers at two pieces each.
Clear jelly was a pastry cook's proof of skill long before it was a convenience. Through the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth century the gelatine came from calves' feet or isinglass, boiled for hours and then clarified with egg white in exactly the manner described here; commercial sheet and shred gelatines, sold from around the middle of the nineteenth century, cut a day's labour down to a soak, with granulated gelatine a later development. What survived the change was the ritual of clarification and the presentation: brilliance was the whole point, and a jelly you could not read newsprint through was a failure. The instruction to cut diamonds and pair two colours in one saucer belongs to the same aesthetic as the moulded, layered and 'macedoine' jellies of hotel and restaurant service around 1900 -- cheap to make in bulk, impressive on the plate, and reliably dispatched from a shallow pan by a cook working at speed.