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Jelly Stock
Soak one and one-half ounces of gelatine, then put it in a saucepan with one quart of water, one-half pound of loaf sugar, the beaten whites and shells of two eggs, the strained juice of two lemons and one tablespoonful of whole mixed spices. Boil the ingredients slowly for about half an hour, adding a little more water occasionally to keep up the original quantity of jelly. Pass it two or three times through a jelly-bag till it is quite clear and transparent, then pour it into a basin and place it one side for use. The stock can be divided and made into as many different kinds as may be desired. Orange or lemon extracts should not be used for flavorings, as they dim the transparent clearness of the jelly and give to it a cloudy appearance. St. Petersburgh Jelly.
Warm one pint of lemon jelly and pour half of it into one basin and the other half into another. Color one of these with cochineal and flavor the other with noyau. When the cochineal jelly is nearly set, whisk it well and throw into it the noyau jelly already nearly set and cut up into small pieces and mixed up with a few pistachionuts cut very fine. Place the whole in a fancy-shaped mould, pack in ice, cover over the top, pack ice on it, and let it remain until set and quite firm. Dip the mould into warm water, wipe it dry with a cloth, turn the jelly out onto a dish, and serve. Strawberry Jelly Pick the stems from one and one-half pound of strawberries, put them in a basin, cover them with one quart of syrup at 30 degrees, that has cooled a little, and let them stand to steep for an hour. Whisk over the fire in a stewpan three and one-half ounces of gelatine, the whites of three eggs, the juice of a lemon and one quart of water. When it boils, remove it. Strain the strawberries through a jelly-bag and mix the syrup with the gelatine. Pour the mixture into a mould, pack it in ice, cover it with a baking-sheet, put ice on the top and let it set for two hours. When ready to serve, turn the jelly out onto a dish.
A chef's base jelly with two finished dishes built on it. Everything here depends on clarity, so the clarification and the straining matter more than any timing.
- The hinge: never squeeze the bagThe egg whites and shells coagulate as the liquid heats and trap the haze; disturbing that raft, or forcing the jelly through the bag, undoes the whole point. Let it drip, and pour the first cloudy runnings back through the bag a second and third time as directed.
- Gelatine quantitiesOne and a half ounces is about 42 g, or six 7 g envelopes of modern powdered gelatine, to a quart of liquid — a firm, sliceable mould jelly, stiffer than a modern dessert gel. Sheet gelatine works at the same weight. Bloom it in cold water first, as "soak" instructs.
- Loaf sugarLoaf or lump sugar was refined cane sugar broken from a cone, prized because it was cleaner than the brown sugars of the day. Ordinary granulated sugar is the equivalent; half a pound is one cup plus two tablespoons.
- Syrup at 30 degreesThis is the Baumé hydrometer scale used in professional pastry kitchens, not a temperature. Thirty degrees Baumé is roughly 56 percent sugar by weight — about 1 1/4 lb sugar dissolved in 1 pint water, boiled briefly and cooled.
- Noyau and cochinealNoyau is a stone-fruit-kernel liqueur with a marzipan flavour; crème de noyaux is the surviving commercial version, and almond extract is the nearest substitute. Cochineal is carmine, still sold as a red food colour; a few drops is plenty.
- Whole mixed spicesA period blend, typically cinnamon stick, whole cloves, allspice berries and a blade of mace. One tablespoon of whole spices in a quart is a light background note, not a spiced jelly.
- Packing in iceThe ice-packed mould and covering baking sheet are a nineteenth-century refrigerator. Cover the mould and chill it at 40F or below; a quart mould of this strength needs four to six hours, and overnight does no harm.
- Turning outA three-second dip in warm — not hot — water, then invert onto a wetted plate so the jelly can be slid into position. A jelly this firm releases cleanly; longer in the water melts the surface and dulls it.
- YieldA quart of stock makes eight to ten moulded portions. The strawberry version, at two quarts of finished liquid, serves sixteen or fills one large mould.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book records the working practice of a hotel kitchen at the height of the moulded-jelly era, when a clear jelly stock was kept in the larder the way a chef today keeps stock or pastry cream, ready to be split, coloured and flavoured to order. The technique — gelatine clarified with egg white and shell, sharpened with lemon, strained through a conical flannel jelly-bag — descends from the English and French confectionery manuals of the mid-century, and the Baumé hydrometer reading for the strawberry syrup marks it as professional rather than domestic writing. Dishes named for cities were a standing convention of the period's grand menus, and St. Petersburgh Jelly belongs to that habit rather than to any documented Russian original; the pink-and-green marbling of cochineal and noyau with pistachio is decoration first and flavour second. Oscar's warning against orange and lemon extracts is the sentence that gives the whole entry away: in a dining room lit for display, a jelly that was merely tasty but cloudy had failed.