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Sugar (Make same as Lemon Jelly)
Make same as Lemon Jelly.
Wine Jelly I 2 tablespoons granulated 1/2 box gelatine or gelatine 1/2 cup cold water 1⅔ cups boiling water 1 cup sugar 1 cup Sherry or Madeira wine 1/3 cup orange juice 3 tablespoons lemon juice Soak gelatine twenty minutes in cold water, dissolve in boiling water; add sugar, wine, orange juice, and lemon juice; strain, mould, and chill. If a stronger jelly is desired, use additional wine in place of orange juice. 1½ box gelatine or
A clear moulded wine jelly of the sort that filled the dessert chapter of every turn-of-the-century book. The method is simple, but the gelatine measures are given in units no longer sold.
- A "box" of gelatineGranulated gelatine was sold in boxes of roughly an ounce, so half a box is in the region of 1/2 oz, though the recipe's own equivalence of half a box to 2 tablespoons suggests somewhat more than that. Reckon on about two to two and a half 1/4-oz envelopes, enough to set something in the order of 3 1/2 to 4 cups of liquid to an unmoulding firmness.
- The water measureThe quantity of boiling water as printed is out of proportion to the gelatine and to the rest of the liquid, and is almost certainly a misprint. Judge it against the total liquid rather than the figure on the page.
- Soaking still mattersTwenty minutes in cold water is generous but not wasted -- fully hydrated granules dissolve without grit. Modern envelopes need only five minutes, but longer does no harm.
- Do not boil after the wine goes inThe boiling water dissolves the gelatine; everything after that is stirred into warm, not hot, liquid. Heating the sherry off drives away the aroma that is the entire point of the dish, and the alcohol is never cooked out here.
- Strain, and mean itStrain through a double thickness of cheesecloth or a fine sieve. Pulp and citrus oil clouds the jelly, and a wine jelly is judged on clarity.
- ChillingRinse the mould with cold water before filling. Four hours in the refrigerator is the minimum; overnight is safer for a large mould. Unmould by dipping the base briefly in warm water.
- The wineSherry or Madeira here would have been a drinking wine rather than a seasoned cooking wine; the style is not specified, and period versions were made with both dry and sweet. Substituting more wine for the orange juice, as the note allows, gives a sharper, more spirituous jelly.
- YieldAbout a quart or a little more, serving six to eight in small moulds or glasses; whipped cream was a common accompaniment.
Wine jelly belongs to the long tradition of clear moulded jellies that ran from the calf's-foot stock of the eighteenth-century kitchen through to the boxed granulated gelatine of the 1890s, which is what this recipe assumes. Packaged gelatine turned a two-day project of boiling, clarifying and straining into a twenty-minute soak, and cookbooks of the period responded with page after page of variations distinguished only by their flavouring -- lemon, orange, coffee, wine. Jellies of this kind were also standard invalid cookery: light, cold, easy to swallow, and, with sherry in them, thought to be strengthening, a belief generally traced to the older medical use of fortified wine as a tonic. Their place among cold desserts reflects a household without reliable freezing but with an icebox good enough to set a mould.