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Jellied Vegetables
Soak one tablespoon granulated gelatine in one-fourth cup cold water, and dissolve in one cup boiling water; then add one-fourth cup, each, sugar and vinegar, two tablespoons lemon juice, and one teaspoon salt. Strain, cool, and when beginning to stiffen, add one cup celery cut in small pieces, one-half cup finely shredded cabbage, and one and one-half canned pimentoes cut in small pieces. Turn into a mould and chill. Remove from mould and arrange around jelly thin slices of cold cooked meat overlapping one another. Garnish with celery tips.
A vinegar aspic set with vegetables, meant to be turned out whole and ringed with cold meat. Everything depends on adding the vegetables at the right moment.
- The hinge: catch the jelly at the right stage"Beginning to stiffen" means the consistency of raw egg white, when a spoon drawn through leaves a brief track. Add the celery and cabbage sooner and they tend to float to the top; add them much later and the jelly may not knit around them, giving a mould that breaks apart when turned out.
- Gelatine strengthOne tablespoon of granulated gelatine is close to one modern envelope (1/4 oz, 7 g), which sets about two cups of liquid. The total liquid here is about a cup and a half plus the two tablespoons of lemon juice, so the set will be firm enough to unmould but not rubbery.
- Total liquidOne cup boiling water, a quarter cup vinegar and two tablespoons lemon juice go in after the gelatine has dissolved in the soaking water. Do not boil the mixture once the gelatine is in; a hard boil weakens the set.
- VinegarThe recipe does not say which vinegar; cider vinegar was common in American kitchens and would have run at roughly 4 to 5 percent acidity, much as now. A quarter cup with a quarter cup sugar gives a sweet-sour jelly in the sweet-pickle range; taste the liquid before straining and adjust, since it will read blander cold.
- Canned pimentoesStill sold in small jars, usually 4 oz. One and a half pimentoes is about a third of a cup chopped. Drain and blot them, or the packing liquid will thin the jelly and bleed pink into it.
- The mouldThe recipe specifies only "a mould", and the cold meat is laid around the turned-out jelly rather than in it. Rinse the mould with cold water rather than oiling it, and dip it briefly in hot water to release.
- Chilling timeNo time is given. Allow three to four hours in the refrigerator for a small mould, or overnight; a jelly this size will not set reliably in one hour.
- Yield and servingAbout a pint and a half of jelly, serving four to six as a first course or a light lunch with the sliced cold meat. The recipe does not say which meat.
Moulded savoury jellies were near the centre of American entertaining from the 1890s through the 1930s, when the light made-dish served between heavier courses was a fixture of the table. Commercially granulated gelatine, sold in packets, is what made the fashion possible: before it, a cook wanting aspic boiled calf's feet or bought sheet gelatine and clarified the result with egg white, a day's work. The packet reduced that to a soak and a stir, and cookery writers of the period responded with variations on sweetened, acidulated jelly holding chopped raw vegetables. The combination of celery, cabbage and pimento here is essentially a coleslaw suspended in vinegar jelly, and the pimento, canned in Spain and later grown commercially in Georgia, was the standard way to put red into a cold dish in an era before year-round sweet peppers.