No. 3179

Macedoine Jelly with Champagne

Gelee Macedoine au Champagne

Prepare a macedoine of preserved or fresh fruits. They should be firm. Cut in three-eighths of an inch dice and steep in brandy. Besides this prepare two quarts of orange jelly (No. 3180) and pour it into a small bowl packed in ice; stir it continuously until almost cold, then add to it half a bottleful of champagne and continue to work it in until it attains the consistency of a thick syrup. Now put in the well-drained and wiped fruits. Keep on turning until the jelly begins to solidify, then transfer it to a jelly mold that has been incrusted on pounded ice; lay more of it over and leave for an hour and a half to set thoroughly. Unmold as for No. 3182.

← No. 3178 Californian Pineapple Jelly Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3180 Orange Jelly in Cups →

For the Modern Kitchen

A set jelly with fruit suspended in it, from Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894). Everything hinges on getting the jelly to the thickness of syrup before the fruit goes in, and on the fact that a bottle of champagne is being added to a gelatin that has to hold.

MacédoineSimply a mixture of several fruits cut to a uniform dice — here 3/8 inch, about 1 cm. Ranhofer specifies only that the fruit be firm, and either preserved or fresh; he names no varieties. The brandy steeping is for flavour, not preservation.
The hinge: syrup stageThe jelly must be stirred over ice until it is as thick as heavy syrup before the fruit is added, then kept moving until it starts to set. Add the fruit to thin jelly and it will float or sink into a band at one end of the mold. This is a matter of a minute or two of judgement, not a timing.
Champagne and gelatinRoughly 12 oz (375 ml) of champagne going into two quarts of jelly is a substantial dilution, and alcohol weakens a gelatin set, so the base orange jelly may need to be set a little firmer than a plain water jelly. The recipe has the champagne going in when the jelly is almost cold, off the heat.
Fresh fruit that will not setFresh pineapple, kiwi, papaya and fig carry proteases that digest gelatin and will leave you with a soupy mold. Use the cooked or preserved forms of these, or leave them out. Ranhofer's "preserved" fruits are safe on this count.
Draining and wipingNot fussiness. Brandy and syrup clinging to the dice will streak the jelly and locally soften it. Drain well, blot on a cloth or paper.
"Incrusted on pounded ice"The mold is bedded in crushed ice — add coarse salt to the ice to drop it below freezing point — so the jelly chills against the walls first and takes a clean surface. A metal mold in the refrigerator works, but allow longer than the stated hour and a half; three to four hours is safer for a two-quart mold.
UnmoldingDip the mold in warm (not hot) water for eight to ten seconds, wipe it, loosen the top edge with a fingertip and invert onto a chilled plate. Overheating melts the outer layer and blurs the fruit pattern.
YieldTwo quarts of jelly plus fruit fills a large mold and serves 12 to 16 as an entremets. It scales down cleanly by half if you have a smaller mold.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer cooked at Delmonico's in New York for more than thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the restaurant's working repertoire written out at industrial length. Entries refer to numbered recipes rather than a self-contained method. Elaborate moulded jellies were a set piece of nineteenth-century service, and they came to the table cold, carved-looking and glittering, with visible fruit suspended in a clear medium. The name is French kitchen shorthand — a macédoine is a mixture of diced things, the term generally traced to the mixed peoples of Alexander's Macedonian empire, and it applies equally to a savoury dice of vegetables. Champagne here is doing what truffle and foie gras do elsewhere in the book: marking the dish as expensive at a house whose customers expected to be able to tell.