Home › Cold Desserts › Russian Jelly
Russian Jelly
¼ box gelantine or 1 tablespoon granulated gelatine 1/4 cup cold water 1 cup boiling water 2/3 cup sugar ½ cup Sauterne 1/4 cup orange juice 1½ tablespoons lemon juice Make same as other jellies, cool slightly, and beat until frothy and firm enough to mould. Turn into mould and chill.
A whipped wine jelly: the same gelatine base as a plain wine jelly, but beaten as it sets so it comes out of the mould pale, spongy and about twice the volume. Everything depends on catching the mixture at the right moment.
- The gelatine measureA box of granulated gelatine in this period held 1 ounce, so a quarter box is about 1 tablespoon ".25-ounce envelope" in modern terms. One envelope firmly sets roughly a pint of liquid; a whipped jelly needs to be at the firm end of that range to hold its froth.
- Liquid total is the thing to watchAs printed, the wine measure would push the total liquid well past a pint, which one tablespoon of gelatine will not set firmly enough to mould. Half a cup of wine brings the total in line with the rest of the proportions; treat the larger figure as doubtful rather than following it blindly.
- Soften, then dissolveSprinkle the gelatine over the cold water and let it stand five minutes until it swells, then pour on the boiling water and stir with the sugar until completely clear. Do not boil the mixture after the gelatine is in, and add the wine and citrus juices off the heat so the aroma survives.
- SauterneIn American books of this period the spelling usually stood for a generic white wine, whether or not it came from Sauternes. A sweet or off-dry white suits the dish; a very dry white will taste thinner and sharper against the orange.
- The hinge: when to beatChill until the mixture has the consistency of raw egg white -- syrupy and just beginning to hold a line from the whisk. Too soon and it will never froth; too late and it sets in lumps you cannot smooth out. Setting the bowl in a larger bowl of ice water and beating there gives the most control.
- MouldingRinse the mould in cold water and leave it wet, then fill at once while the froth is still workable. Chill at least four hours; unmould by dipping the mould a few seconds in warm water and inverting onto a cold plate.
- Alcohol and gelatineNothing here is cooked, so the wine's alcohol remains. Note also that gelatine is an animal product, and that fresh pineapple, kiwi or papaya juice stirred in would prevent it setting at all.
- YieldOn the reduced wine measure suggested above, about a pint before beating and near a quart after -- four to six servings; as printed it makes half again as much. Good with a plain pouring cream or a spoonful of soft custard.
Wine and fruit jellies of this kind fill a long run in turn-of-the-century American cookery books, and this is the whipped variant of the family; nineteenth-century American and English books attach "Russian" to a number of beaten or frothed creams and jellies, though what the name was meant to signal is not documented. Commercial granulated gelatine, sold by the boxed ounce from about 1890, replaced the slow business of boiling calves' feet and made moulded desserts a more routine possibility in an ordinary household. Beating a setting jelly to a froth doubled its bulk and turned a clear jelly into something opaque and snow-like, at the cost of nothing but attention.