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Savoury Jelly, to Put Over Cold Pies
294. Make it of a small bare knuckle of leg or shoulder of veal, or a piece of scrag of that or mutton; or, if the pie be of fowl or rabbit, the carcasses, necks, and heads added to any picce of meat will be sufficient, observing to give consistence by cow-heel or shanks of mutton. Put the meat, a slice of lean ham or bacon, a fagot of different herbs, two blades of mace, an onion or two, a small bit of lemon-peel, and a tea-spoonful of Jamaica pepper bruised, and the same of whole pepper, and three pints of water, in a stewpot that shuts very close. As soon as it boils, skim it well, and let it simmer very slowly till quite strong; strain it, and when cold take off the fat with a spoon first, and then, to remove every particle of grease, lay a clean piece of cap or blotting-paper on it. When cold, if not clear, warm it, and, after letting it stand for a few minutes, pour the clearer part off the sediment, and then boil the former for a few minutes with the whites of two eggs, after which it must be strained through a fine cloth in a strainer, and put by to cool, then it must be skimmed.
This is aspic — a heavily gelatinous veal or mutton stock, clarified and poured into a cold raised pie to fill the gap left under the crust as the filling shrinks. The whole point is the set, so everything hinges on collagen and on clarity.
- The hinge: gelatine, not flavourCow-heel (an ox or cow foot) and mutton shanks are here purely for the collagen that makes the stock set firm when cold. Modern butchery gives you split veal knuckle, pig's trotters or ox foot for the same job. Test a spoonful on a cold saucer in the refrigerator before you commit: it should be firmly rubbery, not merely syrupy.
- Simmer, never boilA rolling boil emulsifies fat into the stock and clouds it, which is why the recipe insists on skimming as soon as it comes up and then simmering "very slowly". Several hours at a bare tremble suits a stock this strong.
- Jamaica pepperAllspice berries. A teaspoonful bruised is a generous amount for three pints and will dominate if you leave it in for the whole simmer; add it in the last hour if you want it lighter.
- Fagot of herbsA bundle tied with string — parsley stalks, thyme, a bay leaf — what is now sold as a bouquet garni. Tied, so it lifts out whole rather than needing to be strained away.
- Three pintsReckoned at the 20 fl oz pint, about 60 fl oz or 1.7 litres of water, reduced by simmering to something "quite strong".
- DegreasingChilling overnight and lifting the solid fat cap off is far more effective than spooning. The blotting-paper trick still works for the last film — draw a sheet of unprinted absorbent paper flat across the surface — but modern paper towel does the same and is cleaner.
- The egg-white raftWhisk the whites into the cool stock, bring it up slowly without stirring, and let the coagulating raft rise and trap the sediment. Strain through a scalded cloth without pressing or squeezing, which forces cloudiness through.
- Filling the piePour the jelly in when it is cool and thickening but still liquid, through the hole in the pie lid, and only once the pie itself is completely cold. Warm jelly into a warm pie will melt the fat in the forcemeat and leach out grey juices.
Savoury jelly belongs to the world of the raised cold pie — game, veal-and-ham, pork — baked in a standing crust that shrinks away from its filling as it cools and leaves a cavity. A well-set stock poured in through the vent hole seals that cavity against air, keeping the meat moist and, in a period before reliable refrigeration, keeping it edible rather longer. That the jelly here is built from carcasses, necks and heads left over from the birds or rabbits already in the pie is characteristic of nineteenth-century English kitchen economy: the scraps that made the pie also made the thing that preserved it. Compilations like this one gathered such instructions from earlier domestic manuals, and the wording of aspic recipes of this type is often traced back to Maria Rundell's New System of Domestic Cookery of 1806, which several later books followed closely.