No. 3191

Moscovite of Strawberries

Moscovite aux Fraises

Put one pint of clear gelatine jelly (No.106) into a glazed vessel, having it only half as thick as usual but much sweeter. In another vessel have a pint of strawberry pulp; mixing with a grated slice of fresh pineapple, a small tied bunch of lemon or orange peel, a bit of vanilla, the juice of five or six oranges and half a pound of powdered sugar, let the whole macerate for a quarter of an hour, then strain and mix it in with the jelly. Pour this preparation into a large jelly mold furnished with a cover (Fig.144), and let freeze for at least two hours in a pail with salted ice and saltpetre. At the last moment remove the paste from the mold, also the cover, and dip briskly in warm water; wipe and turn the jelly out on a cold dish, and surround it with a garnishing of small cakes.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A moscovite is a jelly frozen rather than merely chilled — softer and lighter than an ice, but firmer than a set jelly. Two details in Ranhofer's text decide whether it works.

The pineapple will attack the gelatineFresh pineapple contains bromelain, which digests gelatine and prevents it setting. Fifteen minutes of maceration with raw grated pineapple is enough to weaken the jelly noticeably. Scald the grated pineapple or its strained juice to a simmer for a minute before adding it, or substitute canned pineapple juice, which is already heat-treated.
"Half as thick as usual but much sweeter"Both halves matter. The mixture is frozen, so it needs far less gelatine than a jelly that must stand at room temperature; use about half the gelatine of a standard clear jelly. Cold blunts sweetness, so the extra sugar is not excess — it tastes correct only when frozen.
No. 106, clear gelatine jellyRanhofer's base is a separate numbered recipe for a clarified sweet jelly, not reproduced here. Any clear, well-flavoured lemon or white-wine jelly at half strength will do; the point is transparency and acidity, not the specific formula.
QuantitiesA pint of strawberry pulp means fruit sieved to a purée — roughly 1½ to 2 lb of hulled berries. Weigh the sugar rather than measure it: half a pound is half a pound whichever kind you use, and cup volumes differ widely between finely ground granulated and modern cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar. 'Powdered' in 1894 generally meant ground granulated or loaf sugar rather than today's confectioners' sugar; either dissolves here.
The freezing pail and saltpetreSalt and saltpetre were added to crushed ice to drive the bath below 0°F, which was how a mould was frozen before mechanical refrigeration. A domestic freezer does the same work. Neither salt nor saltpetre touches the food; they are in the ice around the sealed mould.
Sealing the mould"Remove the paste from the mold" refers to a luting paste of flour and water smeared around the join of lid and mould to keep brine out. Butter and a band of plastic wrap or foil serve the same purpose.
Freezing timeTwo hours in a brine pail is aggressive; a home freezer at 0°F will want four to six hours for a quart mould, and the texture is best if it is transferred to the refrigerator for fifteen minutes before unmoulding so it is firm but not brick-hard.
Turning outDip briskly is the operative word — a few seconds in warm water, wipe dry, invert onto a cold plate. A long dip melts the outer layer and dulls the surface.
YieldThe mixture comes to appreciably more than a quart, which is why Ranhofer calls for a large mould; expect eight to ten servings as a cold entremets. The 'small cakes' of the garnish are unspecified — any small dry cake or sponge finger suits.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its cold entremets chapter reflects a kitchen with an ice house rather than a freezer. À la moscovite — Muscovite, Russian-style — was a nineteenth-century French kitchen term for preparations frozen in a sealed, covered mould buried in salted ice. The name is usually associated with the period's enthusiasm for Russian fashions in dining, though the derivation is traditional rather than documented. The result sits deliberately between two categories: too soft to be an ice, too cold to be a jelly. Saltpetre appears alongside salt in period freezing mixtures, and that it survives here as a casual instruction is a reminder of how much of the confectioner's craft was chemistry performed by hand.