No. 3184

Tunisian Jelly, Ribboned

Gelee Tunisienne Rubanee

Prepare about a quart of strawberry jelly, the same as for No. 3183, also a quart of lemon jelly into which has been added a gill of kirsch; put this last into a tin basin and beat it on ice until it becomes white. Incrust a cylindrical mold (Fig. 150) on ice; pour into its bottom a half-inch thick layer of the white jelly and let get quite hard; then on it pour a layer of the strawberry jelly of the same thickness as the other, and leave it also to harden; on this pour another one of white jelly, and continue the same until the mold is completely full, and let the whole get thoroughly hard on ice. Unmold it at the last moment.

← No. 3183 Strawberry or Raspberry Jelly Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3185 Violet Jelly →

For the Modern Kitchen

A striped ribbon jelly from Ranhofer's Delmonico's repertoire: alternating bands of clear red fruit jelly and an opaque whipped lemon-kirsch jelly, built layer by layer in a mold. Nothing about it is difficult, but the whole thing stands or falls on the temperature of each layer as it goes in.

The hinge: pour cool, not warmEach new layer must be liquid but barely so, thick enough to coat a spoon slowly. Warmer than that and it can melt the set surface beneath, bleeding the colors into each other and spoiling the stripe.
Set, but not bone dryLet each band firm until it holds a fingerprint without wetting the finger, then add the next. Ranhofer himself says to let each layer get "quite hard" before the next goes on, and the finished mold to set "thoroughly hard on ice."
A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces, of kirsch to a quart of lemon jelly. Kirsch is unsweetened cherry brandy, not cherry liqueur; the sweetened kind will throw the balance off.
Alcohol and gelatinSpirit in the mix works against the set, and whipping the jelly aerates and softens it further. It is worth setting that portion a little firmer than a plain jelly.
Beating it whiteThe lemon jelly is whipped over ice only once it has begun to thicken — beat it while still thin and it stays clear; beat it once it has set and it turns to lumps. The window is short, and the result is an aerated, opaque band that reads as white against the red.
"Incrust a mold on ice"Ranhofer means packing the mold in crushed ice to hold it cold while each layer sets. A bowl of ice water reaching most of the way up the mold, or a freezer set to its warmest, does the same work; do not let the jelly actually freeze, which ruptures the set.
Gelatin quantityThe original leans on Nos. 3183 and the house jelly stock and gives no weight here. For a quart of jelly that must unmold in ribbons, count on a firmer set than a spoon jelly — roughly 2 to 2.5 envelopes (about half an ounce) of powdered gelatin per quart, adjusted for the alcohol.
UnmoldingDip the mold in warm — not hot — water for five to eight seconds, run a thin knife around the rim, and invert onto a chilled plate. "At the last moment" is literal: the whipped bands soften faster than the clear ones and the stripes lose their edge on a warm table.
YieldTwo quarts of jelly in a cylindrical mold serves ten to twelve as a cold entremets.

A Little History

Rubanée is simply "ribboned," and the technique — clear jelly and opaque jelly poured in alternating bands — was a standard nineteenth-century dining-room flourish, showing off both the cook's patience and the household's access to ice. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as an exhaustive record of that kitchen's output, and this jelly sits in a long run of variations where the same method is dressed in different names and flavors. "Tunisienne" tells you little about Tunisia; French menu language of the period attached geographic epithets freely as a way of distinguishing one preparation from its neighbors on the page. What the recipe really documents is the commercial gelatin trade: sheet and granulated gelatin were by the 1890s increasingly taking the place of the days-long labor of boiling calves' feet and clarifying the stock — though the older method persists in the book alongside prepared gelatine — which is why a book like this can call for quarts of jelly in a dozen colors without comment.