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Sparking Wine Jelly
Take the brightest wine jelly, deep red, as made by the stock jelly method, and froth a little of it and manage as directed for champagne jelly, stirring the froth in with only one turn--not beating, which would destroy its clearness--whipped jelly can be congealed in the bottom of a mold first, nearly cold jelly poured in and the whole turned out at last with the froth on top.
This is a variation rather than a standalone formula: it assumes you already have a batch of clear red wine jelly from the book's "stock jelly" method and tells you what to do differently. Everything here hinges on clarity, so the handling matters more than the quantities.
- The hinge: one turn, not beatingThe frothed jelly is folded into the clear jelly with a single pass of the spoon, so that bubbles are suspended in a still-transparent body. Whisking or repeated stirring emulsifies the froth throughout and the whole thing goes cloudy and pale, which defeats the point.
- "Stock jelly method"The book's stock jelly is a strong, clarified jelly base held in reserve and flavored to order; period stock jellies were generally cleared with egg white and shell and set with gelatin, isinglass or calf's foot. A modern equivalent is a clarified sweetened gelatin base firm enough to unmold without being rubbery.
- "Sparking" is sparkling"Sparking" is almost certainly a printer's slip for "sparkling" -- The dish imitates the bead of sparkling wine; the froth is mechanical, not carbonation, and adding actual fizzy wine at the end will not survive the setting.
- Frothing at the right temperatureJelly whips only in a narrow window, when it is syrupy and just beginning to thicken. Too warm and it will not hold air; too cool and it sets in lumps that will show as streaks. Set the bowl in ice water and watch it rather than timing it.
- "Nearly cold jelly"Means jelly cooled to the point of thickening but still pourable. Pouring warm jelly onto the set froth layer melts it and muddies the line between the two.
- Building the moldCongeal the whipped layer in the bottom of the mold until firm to the touch, then add the clear jelly and chill until fully set, which will take several hours. Unmolded, the froth sits on top as a pale cap over the deep red.
- The red colorThe recipe names no colorant; period red jellies were commonly made with claret or port, sometimes reinforced with cochineal. Cochineal is still sold as carmine; a dark red wine plus a little concentrated fruit juice will do the same job without it.
Jessup Whitehead's The American Pastry Cook was published in the 1890s for cooks in hotels, restaurants and similar commercial kitchens, and its terse cross-referencing style — "manage as directed for champagne jelly" — assumes a reader working through a chapter of related molds in sequence rather than a home cook opening the book at one page. Clear wine jellies were a standard of the late nineteenth-century dessert repertoire, and a brilliant, unclouded jelly advertised that the kitchen had clarified its stock properly and kept it cool. Whipped or "sparkling" jellies added a second trick, a foam layer suspended or capped over the clear body to suggest the bead of champagne, and they belong to the same fashion for glassy, jewel-toned molded sweets as charlottes, macédoines of fruit in jelly and the ribboned bavarois of the period.