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Princess Victoria Jelly
Pour one pint of milk into a saucepan and add a small lump of sugar and the rind of half a lemon, one ounce of gelatine, a few bruised coriander-seeds and a slight flavoring of vanilla. Place the saucepan on the fire and stir continually until the gelatine is quite dissolved. Pass it through a fine sieve into a basin and divide into three equal quantities. Color one of these with cochineal, leaving the other two white. Have ready an equal quantity of jelly beaten up with gold-leaf. Pour half the white jelly into a shallow round tin mould packed in ice, allow it to become firm, then pour over the cochineal-colored jelly, and when this has set the gold-leaf or Dantzic jelly and finally the balance of the white or plain jelly. Cover the mould with a lid, pack the top with ice and allow it to remain until the whole is quite firm. Take out the mould, turn out the contents and cut it at once into bands or strips; decorate the top and sides of a plain mould with these, fill the center with any kind of fruit and jelly, and pack the mould again in ice. When set, turn the jelly out onto a dish, and serve.
An elaborate Victorian ribbon jelly: a stiff milk jelly set in colored layers, cut into strips, then used to line a second mould. Most of the work is in the setting, and the whole thing depends on getting the gelatine strength right.
- The hinge: gelatine strengthOne ounce of gelatine to one pint of milk is deliberately stiff — the set slab has to be turned out and sliced into bands without slumping. That is about four 1/4-oz envelopes of powdered gelatine per 2 cups of milk; the leaf equivalent depends entirely on the brand's sheet weight, so weigh rather than count sheets. A softer, more pleasant-to-eat ratio will collapse when you cut it.
- Do not boilHeat only until the gelatine is fully dissolved and the milk is steaming. Prolonged boiling can weaken gelatine's setting power, and milk left over too high a heat will catch on the pan.
- "A small lump of sugar"Roughly a modern cube's worth, perhaps a teaspoon, though loaf sugar was broken to no fixed size. The jelly is meant to be barely sweet, since the finished mould is filled with sweetened fruit and jelly; add sugar to taste if serving the milk jelly more prominently.
- Dantzic jellyDanziger Goldwasser, a clear caraway-and-anise liqueur from Danzig traditionally suspended with flakes of gold leaf. Oscar's instruction to have "an equal quantity of jelly beaten up with gold-leaf" means a fourth portion of jelly, roughly the same volume as each of the three others, flecked with gold rather than colored.
- Gold leafUse 23- or 24-karat edible leaf sold for confectionery. Imitation leaf (Schlagmetal) is brass and is not food.
- CochinealThe period pink came from crushed scale insects. Carmine and cochineal extract are still sold as food colors; some people react to them, so declare it if you are feeding guests. Any modern red will do the same job.
- Ice and moulds"Packed in ice" means an ice bath, which chills faster than a refrigerator and was the standard method in a kitchen of 1896. The refrigerator works, but allow ample time and make sure each layer is fully firm before pouring the next, or the colors bleed.
- UnmouldingDip the tin briefly in warm water and dry it before inverting. Cut the strips while the slab is cold and cut them with a thin knife wiped between cuts; the milk jelly smears easily.
- YieldThe recipe gives no mould size or serving count. Sieving into a basin, as directed, removes the coriander seed and rind and is not optional.
Layered "ribbon" jellies like this belong to the high period of the moulded dessert, when gelatine had become reliable and cheap enough for hotel kitchens to treat it as architecture rather than luxury — Francatelli and Gouff"e both give related banded and lined jellies. The Princess Victoria name is the kind of royal dedication that attached freely to nineteenth-century sweets and garnishes, and such names are generally traced to a fashion rather than to any documented dish made for a particular princess. The gold-flecked layer is the tell of the period's taste for display: Danziger Goldwasser, a liqueur suspended with real gold leaf, was a standby of the grand hotel bar and dessert station alike. Oscar Tschirky, who ran the Waldorf's dining rooms from 1893, published this in 1896 among the set pieces a well-drilled brigade could produce on demand, and its succession of separate settings shows it was written for a kitchen with ice, labor, and time to spare.