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Champagne Jelly in Glasses
Put fifteen leaves of gelatine in a basin, cover them with cold water and allow them to soften for half an hour; then drain off the water. Find out the consistence of the gelatine, pour it into the champagne glasses, not allowing the liquid to come quite to the brim, place them in a bucket, surround them with ice, cover the top and allow the jelly to set. Pour into a basin a little dissolved jelly and whip it until it is white and frothy; then take up tablespoonfuls and put it into each of the glasses when the other jelly is set. When the froth is cool wipe the glasses and serve.
This entry is one of the badly compressed ones in Oscar's book: it tells you how to soften the gelatine and how to chill the glasses, but never states the champagne, the sugar, the lemon or the water, and never says to dissolve the gelatine. Read it as a method for a standard wine jelly rather than a complete formula.
- The missing half of the recipeWine jellies of this type were commonly built from something like a bottle of champagne, a pint or so of water, half a pound of sugar and the juice of a lemon or two, the sugar and water heated to dissolve the gelatine and the wine stirred in off the heat, though proportions varied from cook to cook. None of that is printed here. Work from a current wine-jelly formula and use this page for its technique.
- Leaf gelatineFifteen leaves is meaningless without the grade. Nineteenth-century sheets seem to have been larger and less standardised than today's; modern platinum leaf runs about 1.7 g a sheet and gold about 2 g, the grades being cut so that a sheet of each sets a similar quantity of liquid, and roughly 6-8 sheets will set a quart to a clean spoonable jelly. Fifteen modern sheets in a quart gives something closer to rubber.
- "Find out the consistence"This is the hinge of the whole method. Set a spoonful of the dissolved mixture on a cold saucer in the refrigerator for a few minutes and see whether it holds. Adjust with more soaked gelatine or more liquid before a drop of it goes into the glasses, because there is no correcting it afterwards.
- Do not boil the wineDissolve the gelatine in the hot sweetened water, then add the champagne once the pan is off the heat and only warm. Boiling drives off both the alcohol and the aroma you paid for, and sustained high heat weakens gelatine's setting power.
- The ice bucketStanding the filled glasses in a bucket packed with ice and covering the top is simply the Waldorf's refrigerator. A modern fridge does the same work; allow four hours, or overnight for glasses filled deep.
- The whipped toppingReserve some of the liquid jelly, chill it until it is syrupy and just beginning to thicken, then whisk it to a white foam. Whipped too early it stays liquid; too late and it seizes into lumps that will not spoon smoothly.
- ClarityWine jellies of this period were usually cleared with beaten egg white and shell and strained through a flannel jelly bag. Straining twice through a coffee filter or fine muslin gets you most of the way without the fuss.
- YieldA bottle of champagne with water and sugar in the proportions suggested above will fill somewhere between eight and twelve champagne glasses depending on their size, allowing headroom for the froth. Wipe the outside of each glass before it goes to the table, as the original directs.
Wine jellies were the standard light dessert of the American hotel dining room in the 1890s, and champagne was the most expensive form of the idea: the point was less the flavour, which is faint, than the visible extravagance of a whole bottle of wine set into a dozen glasses. Oscar Tschirky, the maitre d'hotel who put his name to this collection, worked at a moment when commercial gelatine, sold since the mid-nineteenth century, had made such dishes reliable for a large kitchen; earlier cooks had to boil calves' feet or isinglass and clarify the result themselves, which is why eighteenth-century jelly recipes tend to be considerably longer and this one runs to a paragraph. Serving the jelly in the glass rather than turning out a moulded shape was the newer, more informal fashion, and it also solved a practical problem, since a jelly soft enough to be pleasant to eat is often too soft to stand unsupported. The abrupt, half-finished quality of the text is typical of the book, which reads as a professional's working notes rather than instruction for a home cook.