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Savoury Jelly
of each; two anchovies, two onions sliced, some salt, two or three blades of mace, and some whole pepper. To the above ingredients add a little butter, with a small portion of flour, having previously made it brown by stirring it till the froth sinks. Boil the whole together for twenty minutes.
What survives here is the seasoning and finishing of a brown savoury jelly — essentially a well-flavoured stock thickened and coloured with a browned flour-and-butter paste. The proportions of the base are not given in the text as it stands, so treat this as a method rather than a formula.
- "Till the froth sinks"This is the hinge. Butter kneaded with flour and cooked until the foam subsides and the mixture turns nut-brown is a brown roux; stopping too early leaves a raw, pasty taste, and taking it past dark chestnut turns it bitter. Stir constantly over moderate heat and add it to the hot liquid in small pieces so it disperses.
- "Jelly" in this senseA Victorian savoury jelly sets from the gelatine in a long-simmered stock of veal knuckle, calf's foot or shin of beef, not from the flour. Flour thickening will give body and gloss but will never set clear, so a stock with real gelatine in it is what makes the dish work; a modern reduced brown stock or a good jellied veal stock is the right starting point.
- AnchoviesTwo anchovies here are a seasoning rather than a flavour in their own right; they dissolve into the liquid and read as depth rather than fish. The barrel-salted anchovies of the period were stronger than modern oil-packed fillets; rinse salted ones before use, and remember that two whole fish amount to four modern fillets. The recipe gives no quantity of liquid, so judge by taste.
- MaceBlades of mace are the dried lacy covering of nutmeg and are stocked by spice merchants rather than most supermarkets. If you have only ground mace, a scant pinch stands in for a blade, and it should be added late since it loses aroma with boiling.
- Whole pepper and sliced onionThe text gives no straining step, but neither is meant to be eaten, and for a clear jelly the sensible course is to pass the whole through a fine sieve or muslin once the twenty minutes are up; left in, the onion will cloud the finished jelly.
- Twenty minutesThat is long enough to cook out the flour and marry the seasonings, and no longer. It is not long enough to build a stock — the gelatine and body must already be in the liquid before this stage begins.
- Setting and servingCool, skim the fat from the surface, and chill until firm before use. Savoury jelly of this kind was used chopped as a garnish, spooned over cold meats and pies, or melted to glaze a raised pie.
The British Cookery Book, edited by J. H. Walsh and published in 1859, belongs to the generation of large compilation cookbooks that gathered contributions from named correspondents and older printed sources alongside the editor's own notes. Savoury jelly was a workhorse of that kitchen: a household that boiled down veal bones or calf's feet had a jellying liquid on hand, and it went into aspics, glazed hams, moulded chicken and the sealed tops of cold pies. Packaged gelatine was already sold in Britain by this date, but home-made stock jelly remained the usual household resource. The anchovy-and-mace seasoning here is thoroughly of its period, part of a long-standing English taste for anchovy as a savoury base note — the same instinct that produced ketchups, essences and the bottled sauces that were commercial by Walsh's day. Browning flour and butter until the froth sinks corresponds to the French roux brun, a technique long established in professional kitchens and widely repeated in British household books by the middle of the century.