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Coffee Jelly
cup good clear coffee 3 tablespoonfuls cold cup rich milk water cup boiling water 1 tablespoonful granu 4 tablespoonfuls sugar lated gelatine A little salt Soak the gelatine in the cold water until softened.
Add the boiling water and stir until the gelatine is dissolved. Mix the coffee, milk, sugar, and salt together, and add them to the gelatine. Pour into a mold and set away to harden. Serve with whipped or plain sweetened cream and sprinkle the top with rolled macaroon-crumbs. If there is no cream, serve it with sliced bananas toned up with a little tart fruit-juice.
A simple gelatine dessert built on leftover breakfast coffee. The method is sound; the proportions need reading with care.
- Gelatine strengthOne tablespoon of granulated gelatine is a little more than a standard envelope (1/4 oz, 7 g, about 2 1/4 teaspoons). An envelope sets 2 cups of liquid to a firm, sliceable mold, so a full tablespoon will set it firmer still. If you want a softer, spoonable set, use slightly more liquid rather than less gelatine.
- Ambiguous cup measuresThe quantities of coffee, milk and boiling water have lost their fractions in this printing and read simply as "cup." Treat the total liquid as about 2 cups, divided between the coffee, the milk and the boiling water; the 3 tablespoons of cold water for blooming and the 4 tablespoons of sugar are clear.
- Bloom, then dissolveThe cold-water soak is not optional. Gelatine dropped straight into hot liquid clumps and never fully dissolves, leaving rubbery threads through the set jelly.
- Do not boil the mixtureAdd the boiling water to the bloomed gelatine and stir only until clear. Prolonged boiling weakens gelatine's setting power, and once the milk goes in the mixture should not be heated again.
- Curdling riskStrong, hot coffee combined with milk can look grainy if the coffee is very acidic or the milk is close to souring. Cool the coffee-gelatine base slightly before stirring in the milk, and use fresh milk or half-and-half.
- Setting timeFour hours in the refrigerator, or overnight for a clean unmolding. Dip the mold briefly in warm water and invert onto a chilled plate.
- Macaroon crumbsThe garnish most likely means dry almond macaroons crushed to coarse crumbs rather than coconut ones, though both were made at the time. Amaretti work well.
- YieldOn the reading above, about 2 cups of jelly, serving four in small molds or ramekins.
Coffee jelly belonged to the great age of household gelatine; prepared sheet gelatine and isinglass were commercially sold from the middle of the nineteenth century, and granulated gelatine in convenient packets followed, gradually freeing cooks from boiling down calves' feet. That change put molded desserts within reach of any kitchen, and books of this kind seized on them. The instruction to fall back on sliced bananas "toned up with a little tart fruit-juice" when there is no cream is characteristic of the genre, which assumed a household economising rather than entertaining. Coffee jelly is often said to have arrived in Japan with Western-style cafes, though the connection is traditional rather than documented and the first published Japanese recipe is usually dated to the 1910s; it remains a standard summer dessert there, while it has largely disappeared from English and American tables.