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Game in Aspic Jelly
Put into a saucepan two pounds of knuckle of veal, one lean slice of ham, a sprig of thyme, a couple of sprigs of parsley, half a dozen white peppercorns, one teaspoonful of salt and one shallot chopped up fine; pour over three pints of cold water, put the saucepan over the fire and simmer until the liquor is reduced to one pint, then strain it through a sieve and let it stand all night; next day remove all the fat. Put one ounce of isinglass into a basin, pour over it half a pint of cold water and let it soak three hours; then pour over it nearly one quart of boiling water, stirring it quickly until it is quite dissolved. Add the veal gravy which should be a stiff jelly, and when this also is dissolved, add a tablespoonful of sugar, two table-spoonfuls each of lemon juice and red currant jelly dissolved in a little cold water and strained through muslin. Keep stirring until all of these are thoroughly mixed, then strain through a jelly bag without squeezing or shaking. Have ready some hard-boiled eggs cut in slices, and some slices of cold roasted game sprinkled with a little salt. Wet the inside of a mould with cold water, pour in a thin layer of jelly, and when it stiffens, lay over it rings or slices of the egg overlapping one another like a chain, then pour in more jelly. When stiff enough, lay over slices of meat, then more jelly, and so on until the mould is quite full. Let it stand all night, and serve next day.
A two-day project in the original, and it still is: a clarified veal stock one day, the jelly and layering the next. Most of the work is waiting.
- The hinge: clarityStrain through the jelly bag without squeezing or shaking, exactly as written. Forcing the liquid pushes fine sediment through and you get a cloudy aspic, which defeats the entire point of a layered mould.
- IsinglassIsinglass is gelatin from fish swim bladders, sold for brewing rather than cooking today. Substitute plain powdered or leaf gelatin, but treat the quantity as approximate — old isinglass varied enormously in strength, so bloom the gelatin, mix the jelly, then chill a spoonful on a saucer to check the set before you commit to a mould.
- Knuckle of vealThe knuckle (shank, cut across) supplies the collagen that makes the reduced stock set on its own. Ask a butcher for cross-cut veal shank or veal bones with some meat attached; without it you are relying entirely on added gelatin and the flavour thins out.
- The reductionThree pints down to one is a slow uncovered simmer; expect roughly two to three hours, though it depends on the width of the pan. Keep it at a bare tremble — a hard boil emulsifies fat into the stock and clouds it.
- Refrigerate, do not let it standBoth overnight rests in the original assume a cold larder. Cover and chill the stock and the finished mould in the refrigerator. Cooked stock and cooked game held at room temperature overnight is not something to repeat.
- "Cold roasted game"Presumably whatever roast game the kitchen had to hand — pheasant, partridge, grouse, wild duck or venison would all suit. Any roasted dark-fleshed bird works; slice it thin and against the grain so the layers cut cleanly.
- Building the layersEach layer must be set but still tacky before the next goes in, and the jelly you pour must be cool and syrupy, not warm, or it will melt what is beneath it. Keep the working jelly over barely warm water so it does not set in the jug.
- Unmoulding and yieldUnmoulding -- Dip the mould in hot water for a few seconds, dry it, and invert onto a chilled platter. The recipe does not specify a mould size; it produces roughly three pints of jelly before straining losses, so choose the mould to suit and serve as a cold first course or buffet dish.
- Currant jelly and sugarThe sugar, lemon juice and red currant jelly are seasoning, not sweets — they give the tart, faintly sweet edge that traditionally accompanies game. Taste the liquid jelly before straining; it should read as savoury with a sharp finish.
Aspic was a measure of a professional kitchen's competence in the late nineteenth century: it required good stock, patient clarification and a steady cold room, and it displayed all three at once on the buffet. Oscar Tschirky, maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf, published his Cook Book in 1896, and the kitchen chapters read as instructions to a large brigade rather than to a home cook — hence the assumption that cold roasted game is simply lying about waiting to be used. Isinglass, the setting agent here, was one of the common setting agents of the period, alongside calf's-foot jelly and the refined sheet and powdered gelatines that came to displace it; it is still used to clarify beer and wine. The red currant jelly and lemon are the same sweet-tart pairing long associated with game on English and French tables, folded here into the jelly itself instead of served alongside.