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Crystal Jellies
Put one ounce of isinglass in a saucepan with one pint of water, and the rind of one lemon. When it boils stir in one pound of loaf-sugar and one-half pint of light wine. When the isinglass is well dissolved, strain it through a jelly-bag and let it stand until cold. Squeeze the juice of two or three lemons in a cup, keeping back the pips. Grate the rind of one lemon in the juice, and allow it to remain for a short time. Strain the juice into the jelly, whisk it until it begins to stiffen, then turn it into the jelly moulds and let it set. When ready to serve, turn the jellies onto a glass dish.
A Victorian moulded lemon jelly, set with isinglass rather than sheet or powdered gelatine. Nothing here is difficult, but the clarity and the unmoulding both depend on temperature control.
- IsinglassDried collagen from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish, sold in leaves or shreds and largely gone from kitchens by the mid-twentieth century. Plain gelatine substitutes for it; note that 1 oz (four 1/4-oz envelopes) to the 1 pint water plus 1/2 pint wine here is a generous proportion by modern standards and will give a stiff, sliceable jelly, so use less if a softer set is wanted.
- Loaf-sugarRefined sugar sold in a cone or hard block and broken off as needed, prized because it was cleaner than the brown sugars of the day. Granulated sugar is the equivalent; 1 lb is about 2 1/4 cups. This is a sweet jelly by modern taste and the sugar can be cut by a third without harming the set.
- Light wineA dry white table wine. Half a pint is 1 cup. The recipe has it going in with the sugar as the pan boils; keeping it off a hard boil preserves more of the aroma.
- The hinge: add the lemon juice coldStrain, cool, then stir in the acid. Sugar syrup boiled with lemon juice will thin the set, and hot gelatine handled roughly clouds what is meant to be crystal.
- StrainingA jelly-bag is a cone of close flannel or several layers of muslin, hung and left to drip without squeezing. A muslin-lined sieve or a coffee filter does the same job; pressing it forces sediment through and dulls the jelly.
- Whisk lightly, not vigorouslyThe instruction to whisk until it begins to stiffen probably serves to distribute the lemon juice evenly as the jelly thickens. Beaten hard it takes up air and sets pale and foamy rather than transparent.
- Pips and rindLemon seeds turn a syrup bitter, hence the caution to keep them back. Grate only the yellow zest into the juice; the white pith is equally bitter.
- Setting and unmouldingFour to six hours in the refrigerator, or overnight for a large mould. Dip the mould in hot water for a few seconds, loosen the top edge with a fingertip and invert onto a chilled glass dish.
- YieldRoughly 2 pints of jelly once the sugar is dissolved, enough for six small moulds or one large one.
Clear moulded jellies were a set piece of the nineteenth-century dessert table, valued less for flavour than for the labour they announced: someone had clarified, strained and chilled a liquid until it could hold a shape and still be seen through. Isinglass, the fish-bladder collagen called for here, came largely from Russian sturgeon and had long been the finest setting agent available, as well as a fining agent for beer and wine; commercially packaged gelatine displaced it in domestic use around the turn of the twentieth century. Oscar Tschirky, mâitre d'hôtel of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria, published his enormous Cook Book in 1896, and its dessert chapters preserve exactly this kind of hotel-kitchen work — recipes written for a brigade with time, ice and a supply of jelly-bags.