No. 3187

Jelly with Fruits and Kirsch

Gelee aux Fruits et au Kirsch

Prepare about a quart of clarified gelatine with sugar, the filtered juice of four lemons, orange peels and the juice of two oranges. Try its consistency in a small mold on ice. Incrust an ornamental jelly mold (Fig.149) or else a plain cylindrical mold (Fig.150) on ice. Prepare a macedome of either fresh or candied fruits, having greengages, apricots, pineapples, cherries, small quartered and peeled oranges, small balls of white apples, cooked in white syrup, and small balls of pears cooked red and also some strawberries or raspberries, currants or grapes. Candied fruits should be washed in warm water, then carefully dried, while the fresh ones should remain in their natural state. Take as much of these fruits as are necessary to fill the mold, varying the different kinds; pour the jelly into a small tin basin, mix in with it a gill of kirsch and lay it on ice, stirring it around with a clean tinned spoon until it commences to set, then put in the selected fruits, either cut up or whole. Take up this preparation with a silver soup ladle and pour it into the mold until it reaches the top, then cover over with a round sheet of paper and close with a deep cover (Fig. 146) filled with pounded ice; keep it this way for three-quarters of an hour. At the last moment dip the mold in hot water, wipe dry and invert on a cold dish. For a change, or should the jelly appear weak, the mold can be frozen with a little salted ice, but only ten or twelve minutes previous to serving.

← No. 3186 Wine and Liquor Jelly Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3188 Macaronade →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a kitchen with a jelly stock already clarified and an unlimited supply of block ice. Both can be replaced, but one ingredient in his fruit list will quietly destroy the dish.

Fresh pineapple will not setBromelain in raw pineapple digests gelatin and the jelly stays liquid. Use canned or candied pineapple, or poach fresh pineapple in syrup for a few minutes first to kill the enzyme. The same applies to kiwi, papaya and fresh figs if you substitute.
"Clarified gelatine with sugar"This is his stock jelly — sheet gelatin or calf's-foot jelly, sweetened and clarified with egg white. For a quart of liquid firm enough to unmold, count on about 3 tablespoons (three 1/4-oz envelopes) of powdered gelatin or a similar weight, about 3/4 oz, of leaf gelatin, plus sugar to taste — the recipe gives no quantity. Bloom, dissolve warm, do not boil.
A gill of kirschHalf a cup, added off the heat so the aroma survives. Alcohol weakens a set; note that he has you try the consistency of the base jelly in a small mold on ice before you go any further.
"Incrust the mold on ice"He means packing the mold in crushed ice so the jelly chills from the outside in and the fruit stays suspended; the salted ice is a separate option he keeps for the last minutes. A freezer for 15-20 minutes, or the refrigerator, does the same work; the point is that the jelly must already be syrupy and half-setting when the fruit goes in, or everything floats to the top.
TimingThree-quarters of an hour applies to a mold incrusted in ice and covered with pounded ice. In an ordinary refrigerator allow 4 to 6 hours, or overnight for a large ornamental mold.
Do not freeze itHis alternative of setting the mold in salted ice to firm a weak jelly risks ice crystals and a grainy, weeping surface, though he limits it to ten or twelve minutes before serving. Better to correct the gelatin quantity instead.
Candied fruitRinsing in warm water takes off the sugar crust, and he is equally firm about drying the fruit afterwards. Greengages, a small green plum, are now hard to find; use any firm poached plum.
UnmoldingA few seconds in hot water, no more, then wipe dry and invert onto a chilled plate. A quart mold serves 8 to 10 as a dessert course.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the working record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is a set piece of the period rather than a household sweet: a clear jelly is where a nineteenth-century kitchen showed off, because it required a clarified stock, a decorated copper mold and, above all, ice. Commercial ice harvesting and delivery is what made such things possible in a restaurant kitchen at all — Ranhofer treats pounded and salted ice as a routine tool, packing it around the mold much as we would use a refrigerator. The fruit arrangement he calls a macédoine, a mixed dice often said to be named after Macedonia and its patchwork of peoples, a culinary joke generally traced to the eighteenth century. The kirsch is cherry eau-de-vie from the Black Forest and Alsace, a common flavoring for fruit desserts in French professional cooking, and the small apple and pear balls poached in white and red syrup are the same trick of color contrast that runs through the whole book.