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Red Jelly
Soak one ounce of isinglass in one pint of water, and add the eighth part of the well-beaten white of an egg, put it in a saucepan over the fire, and, when nearly melted, add one pound of lump-sugar, broken small, and one-third of a tablespoonful of powdered cochineal, and ten minutes before taking from the fire, add the grated rind of three lemons. Remove the pan from the fire, and add the juice of four lemons and one-half pint of white wine. Strain through a cotton cloth, and, if it looks thick, boil up once. The saucepan should be kept covered while the jelly boils. Allow it to stand and cool before pouring into a mould, which should have the inside dampened with water. Rhubarb Jelly Border with Whipped Cream Cut up into pieces three pounds of rhubarb, put them into a preserving-pan with an equal quantity of sugar, and pour over a little water to prevent the pieces from sticking to the bottom or burning. Set the pan over a very gentle fire, and stir it well until the fruit is quite soft; then pass it through a fine sieve into a basin, and to each quart of pulp mix in two ounces of dissolved gelatine. Turn the preparation into an ornamental border-mould, and let it set firm. Turn it out onto a dish, fill the center with a well-whipped cream, and serve.
Two moulded jellies printed as one block: a clear wine-and-lemon jelly set with isinglass, and a rhubarb border ring filled with whipped cream. Both depend on getting the setting agent right, since neither gives a chilling time.
- Isinglass to gelatineIsinglass is collagen from sturgeon and other fish swim bladders, sold in leaf or shred form and now largely a fining agent for beer and wine. One ounce to a pint of liquid is a stiff, sliceable Victorian set; powdered gelatine is the modern equivalent, though the exchange is not one to one and a test set in a small cup is worth the trouble.
- The egg white is a clarifierThat eighth of a beaten white is not an ingredient in any flavour sense. It coagulates as the liquid heats and traps the haze, which is then caught by the cotton cloth. Do not stir once it begins to set, and let the jelly drip through the cloth rather than squeezing it, or the cloudiness goes straight back in.
- CochinealCochineal is red colouring made from dried scale insects, still sold as carmine or E120. A third of a tablespoon of the dry powder is a great deal by modern standards; liquid cochineal extract is what most cooks will find, and a few drops will colour a pint. Note that it is not vegetarian, and carmine is a recognised allergen for a small number of people.
- Lump sugar and pint sizeLump sugar is simply refined loaf sugar broken from the cone or block; ordinary granulated sugar behaves identically. A pound is about 2 1/4 cups. In an American book of this date the pints are US pints, 16 fl oz.
- White wine, added off the heatThe wine and the lemon juice go in after the pan leaves the fire, though the recipe still allows a single boil-up if the jelly looks thick, which will drive off some of both. Use something dry and unoaked. Half a pint of wine against a pint of water leaves alcohol in the finished jelly, which is worth knowing before serving it to children.
- Damping the mouldRinsing the mould and leaving it wet is the period trick for unmoulding, and it still works. The recipe says to let the jelly stand and cool before pouring. To turn out, dip the mould briefly in warm water.
- The rhubarb borderEqual weights of rhubarb and sugar is very sweet by current taste; cutting the sugar to about half the weight of the fruit is one option, and the pulp will still set. Two ounces of gelatine per quart of pulp is a firm, standing set suited to a ring mould that must hold its shape on a dish.
- YieldThe wine jelly makes roughly a quart and a quarter of liquid. The rhubarb border makes considerably more; measure the sieved pulp before adding the gelatine, since the two ounces are specified per quart.
Oscar Tschirky, who ran the Waldorf dining rooms from 1893 and put his name to this book in 1896, was writing at the tail end of the great age of the moulded jelly. A clear, coloured, unclouded jelly standing upright on a dish was a display of both technique and expensive raw material: isinglass was costly, being imported fish bladder, and the clarifying and straining took hours of a kitchen's time. Gelatine sold in sheets and, from the later nineteenth century, in granulated packets steadily undercut it, and the rhubarb recipe printed immediately below quietly reflects that shift by calling for plain dissolved gelatine instead. Cochineal, imported from Mexico and the Canaries, was the standard red for confectionery and jellies long before coal-tar dyes, and it outlasted many of them; the same insect extract is still listed as carmine on labels today.