No. 3185

Violet Jelly

Gelee aux Violettes

Put one pint of clear syrup into a newly tinned and clean saucepan; bring it to a boil, then remove and throw in a heaping handful of fresh violets, after suppressing their stalks; let infuse for half an hour with the cover on. Strain the liquid into a glazed vessel, and mix in with it three or four spoonfuls of clarified gelatine with some orange and lemon juice. Taste the jelly, to try its consistency, and then pour it into a mold incrusted in broken ice and let set for one hour and a half, and when ready to serve dress it on a cold dish.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a professional pastry section: standing syrup, sheet gelatine already clarified, and ice on hand. The recipe works in a home kitchen, but almost every quantity is given by eye.

Clear syrupIn The Epicurean this means a plain sugar syrup boiled and skimmed until transparent. The recipe gives no density, so a simple syrup of roughly equal weights sugar and water, then measured out to a pint, is a reasonable reading.
The violetsSweet violet, Viola odorata, is the flower meant — the scented garden and woodland violet, not the African violet (Saintpaulia), which is a different plant entirely and not eaten. Use untreated blooms from a garden or a supplier of edible flowers, never florist stock.
Never boil the flowersThe syrup comes off the heat before the violets go in. Violet perfume is volatile and the scent is the whole point of the dish; simmering the petals drives it off and leaves a vegetal, hay-like taste. Half an hour covered, off the fire, is the hinge of the recipe.
Newly tinned saucepanCopper pans were relined with tin because bare copper reacts with acidic fruit and flower infusions, dulling the colour and tainting the flavour. Stainless steel or glass does the same job now; avoid unlined copper, aluminium and cast iron.
Clarified gelatineRanhofer's clarified gelatine is a strong stock of leaf gelatine dissolved, clarified with egg white and strained. Three or four spoonfuls of it is not the same as three or four spoons of dry powder. For a pint of liquid, a soft jelly turned out of a mould needs roughly 4 to 5 sheets of leaf gelatine, or about 2 to 2 1/2 teaspoons of powder — but the original quantity is genuinely ambiguous and the test below is what he relied on.
Testing consistencyChill a spoonful on a saucer over ice for a few minutes. If it sets to a wobble that holds a cut edge, the batch is right; if it stays syrupy, dissolve in a little more gelatine off the heat.
ColourViolet infusion is anthocyanin-based and shifts with acidity. The orange and lemon juice will turn the pale blue-grey infusion toward pink or rose. This is chemistry, not a fault, but add the citrus gradually and taste, since too much also thins the perfume.
Moulding on iceA mould packed in broken ice sets jelly faster than a refrigerator; a little coarse salt in the ice will speed it further, though Ranhofer does not call for salt here. A refrigerator works; allow perhaps three to four hours rather than ninety minutes. To turn out, dip the mould a few seconds in warm water and invert onto a chilled dish.
YieldA pint of jelly serves four to six as a light entremets, or fills six small dariole moulds.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in order. Violet jelly belongs to a nineteenth-century fashion for flower-scented confectionery — crystallised violets from Toulouse, violet pastilles, violet syrup — that ran alongside the perfume trade's enthusiasm for the same flower. Sweet violet has a long history in European kitchens and apothecary shops, where violet syrup was made both as a flavouring and as a mild remedy for coughs, and its habit of turning red in acid and green in alkali made it a standard indicator in early chemistry demonstrations. That a jelly this delicate and this seasonal — violets bloom for a few weeks in spring — sat in the standing repertoire says a good deal about what a Gilded Age restaurant kitchen was expected to produce on demand.