No. 105

Meat Jelly with Gelatine

Gelee de Viande a la Gelatine

Put four quarts of good broth with one pound of gelatine into a saucepan, adding a quarter of an ounce of pepper-corns, two cloves, a few branches of celery and a little mace, put it on to the fire and stir continuously with a whip until the liquid boils; season to taste. Break six eggs, put them with their shells into a bowl and beat them up a little mixing in with them, half a bottle of white wine or a quarter of a bottle of Madeira, one gill of tarragon vinegar, and a quart of small pieces of clean ice, dilute this with a quart of the liquid jelly, and pour the clarification into the remainder of the jelly, stirring it constantly, then return the saucepan to the fire and continue the beating. When the jelly has reached the boiling degree, remove it from the fire, and keep it very warm for half an hour, but it must not boil again; filter as indicated (No. 103).

← No. 104 Calf's Foot Jelly with Madeira Wine Elementary Methods No. 106 Sweet Jelly with Gelatine, or Fish Isinglass →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's working aspic: a gallon of clarified savoury jelly held in the larder for coating cold meats, lining moulds and glazing chaud-froid. It is a professional batch, and the gelatine ratio belongs to a different product than what sits on a supermarket shelf.

The hinge: never boil after clarifyingOnce the egg raft rises and the liquid reaches boiling point, take it off the heat. A second boil breaks the coagulated albumen back into the broth and the jelly turns permanently cloudy. The half hour of very gentle heat afterwards is there to let the raft firm and the sediment settle, not to cook anything.
One pound of gelatine is not a modern poundOne pound of gelatine to four quarts works out at four ounces per quart -- far more than modern gelatine needs. Nineteenth-century commercial gelatine was not standardised and its setting strength varied from maker to maker, so the quantity cannot be read across directly. With modern powdered or leaf gelatine, start at around an ounce per quart for a firm, sliceable aspic and less for a soft coating glaze, testing a spoonful on a cold plate.
Gill and other measuresA gill is 4 fl oz, half a cup. A quarter ounce of peppercorns is about a tablespoon. Half a bottle of white wine is roughly 12 fl oz; a quarter bottle of Madeira about 6 fl oz.
Why the eggs go in with their shellsRanhofer beats the eggs whole, shells and all. The shells are traditionally said to help the coagulating albumen gather into a coherent raft rather than a scattering of curds. If you prefer, use the whites and shells of six eggs and keep the yolks back for another use; the whole-egg method works provided the broth is well degreased first.
The quart of ice is doing real workIt chills the clarification below the point where egg protein sets, so the albumen disperses evenly through the liquid before it begins to coagulate on the slow rise to a boil. Skip it and the whites seize in lumps on contact with warm jelly and clarify nothing.
Degrease before you clarifyNot stated here but assumed: chill the broth and lift the fat, or the finished jelly will carry a greasy bloom no filtering will remove.
FilteringNo. 103 is Ranhofer's own filtering instruction, not reproduced here. The usual practice is to strain through a scalded jelly bag or a doubled cloth, without pressing, and to pass the first cloudy run back through. Set the bag over the receiving basin and leave it alone; squeezing forces sediment through.
Yield and useFive quarts or so, counting the wine, vinegar and melted ice on top of the four quarts of broth. This is a component, not a dish: pour a thin layer into a mould and set, dice the rest for garnish, or reduce a portion slightly for brushing over cold poultry. Refrigerate and treat it as you would any stock, using it within three or four days.

A Little History

Aspic was structural in the nineteenth-century cold kitchen, the material that let a chef mould, glaze, seal and decorate meats served at room temperature, and Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, gives a whole run of jelly formulas in The Epicurean (1894). This one sits directly after his calf's foot jelly with Madeira, and the pairing tells the story of the period: the traditional jelly came from simmering calves' feet for hours to extract their collagen, while commercial gelatine, sold in sheets and packets by the later nineteenth century, delivered the same set out of a box. Ranhofer prints both, without comment. The clarification technique here, egg white and shell drawn slowly to a boil to form a raft, is far older than either and is still the standard method for consommé.