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Champagne Jelly
Dissolve two ounces of gelatine in one quart of cold water, pour it into a saucepan and add the juice of two lemons and three oranges and the whites of two or three fresh eggs and all the shells and three-quarters of a pound of sugar; mix thoroughly, pour in another pint of water, place the saucepan over the fire and stir it continually until the liquor boils. Remove it to the side of the fire and let it keep hot without boiling for fifteen minutes longer. Then run it through a jelly-bag, adding a pint of champagne, pour it into moulds and let it set. Turn it out, and serve.
A clarified wine jelly of the sort that came out of a copper mould at the end of a long dinner. The method is sound, but two of its steps — the egg-white raft and the late addition of champagne — are the whole point and are easy to get wrong.
- Add the champagne off the heatThe pint of champagne goes in after the jelly has been strained, never before or during boiling. Heat drives off both the alcohol and the aromatics; the wine is flavour, not structure. Let the strained liquid cool to lukewarm before stirring it in, or the jelly tastes cooked.
- The gelatineTwo ounces is roughly eight quarter-ounce envelopes of modern powdered gelatine, or the same weight in leaf gelatine (the sheet count varies with the brand), for a total of two quarts of liquid. That is a firm jelly by design, meant to be turned out of a mould and hold its shape. Bloom it in the cold quart for five to ten minutes before it goes near the fire.
- Egg whites and shells are the filterThey are not an ingredient in the finished dish. As the liquid heats, the whites coagulate and drag suspended solids up into a raft, which is why the jelly ends up water-clear. Stir constantly only until it comes to a boil, then stop — disturbing the raft after that undoes the clarification. Crush the shells first.
- "The side of the fire"A cool spot on the range top. Fifteen minutes held hot but short of boiling; the recipe gives no temperature. Leave the raft undisturbed.
- Jelly-bagA conical flannel bag on a stand. A double layer of dampened muslin or a fine cloth in a sieve does the same job. Let it drip; do not squeeze or press, which pushes cloudiness through. Pouring the first cloudy runnings back through the settled raft gives a clearer result.
- Moulds and settingRinse the moulds with cold water and do not oil them — oil clouds the surface. Four to six hours in the refrigerator, better overnight. To unmould, dip the mould to the rim in warm water for a few seconds and invert onto a chilled plate.
- Champagne choiceA dry sparkling wine works better than a sweet one here; three-quarters of a pound of sugar to two quarts is already a sweet jelly. Most of the bubbles will be lost in stirring, which is expected.
- YieldAbout two quarts, which is twelve to sixteen portions from a large mould, or individual dariole moulds for a plated dessert.
Moulded wine jellies were the great show-off dessert of the nineteenth-century dining room: they demanded clarity, and clarity demanded labour, so a trembling transparent jelly on the table announced a kitchen with staff and time. Commercial gelatine, sold in sheets and later in granulated packets, was what made them possible on this scale. Oscar Tschirky, who was maitre d'hotel rather than chef at the Waldorf, collected the house repertoire in his book of 1896. The egg-white clarification here is the same technique used for clear soups; it was long applied to both jellies and consommes, and which came first cannot be shown.