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Russian Jelly
Dissolve twelve or fourteen sheets of French gelatine in a little more than one pint of water, pour it into a saucepan, sweeten with loaf sugar to taste, add the juice of one lemon, the well-whisked whites of two eggs, and two liquor glasses full of brandy; whisk the whole over the fire with an egg-beater until it boils. Put the thinly-pared rind of a lemon at the bottom of a jelly-bag, and pour the jelly over. When it runs through quite clear, whisk it until very frothy. Fill the mould with the jelly, press it down well, and stand it in a cold place. When quite cold, dip the mould quickly into hot water, wipe, turn the contents onto a dish, and serve.
A whipped wine jelly, clarified with egg white and beaten to a froth before moulding. Two things decide whether it works: the gelatine strength and the temperature at which you whisk.
- The hinge: whisk at the right momentFrothing only holds if the jelly has cooled to the consistency of raw egg white — thick and syrupy but not set. Whisk it while still warm and the bubbles collapse; wait too long and it seizes into lumps you cannot smooth out.
- French gelatine sheetsNineteenth-century sheets were not standardised and may have been thinner or weaker than today's leaf gelatine. Twelve to fourteen old sheets to a pint may correspond to something like 4 to 5 modern gold or platinum leaves, though sheet weights vary by brand — go by the manufacturer's ratio for a firm unmoulded jelly and expect to test once.
- Bloom the sheets firstSoak the leaves in cold water until floppy, squeeze them out, then dissolve them in the warm liquid; sheets that go into hot liquid dry leave rubbery undissolved patches.
- A liquor glassAround 1 to 1.5 fl oz, so two glasses is roughly 2 to 3 fl oz of brandy. Whisked over the fire until boiling, some of the alcohol goes.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in cones or hard lumps, broken up for use. Granulated sugar is the direct substitute; start with about 1/3 cup per pint and adjust to the lemon.
- The egg whites are a clarifying raftThey are not there for texture. Boiling coagulates them and they carry the cloudiness up and out, which is why the mixture then goes through the jelly bag. Do not stop whisking before the boil or the whites cook in strands.
- The jelly bagA double layer of dampened muslin in a fine sieve does the same job. Let it drip without squeezing — pressing pushes the sediment through and the jelly clouds.
- UnmouldingA quick dip in hot water, no more than a few seconds, then wipe the mould dry before inverting. A long soak melts the surface and the jelly slumps on the dish.
- YieldAbout a pint of finished jelly, which whips up to considerably more volume. Serves four to six.
Whipped jellies of this kind appear in English and American books through the second half of the nineteenth century under names such as gelée à la russe or Moscovite jelly, the Russian label being applied loosely to a great many fashionable dishes in the decades after service à la russe took over formal dining. What distinguishes it from a plain wine jelly is the second beating: a clear jelly is made in the ordinary way, clarified with egg white and strained, then aerated as it thickens so that it turns opaque and light. Oscar Tschirky, maître d'hôtel at the Waldorf, gathered a large stock of such moulded sweets into his 1896 collection, where they sit alongside the aspics and chaud-froids that the same jelly-making skill produced on the savoury side of the kitchen.