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Custard Jelly
Make a boiled custard of one quart of fresh milk, three eggs, one teacup of sugar, two teaspoonsful of vanilla; dissolve a-half box of gelatine in as little water as will cover it, and when well dissolved add the juice of one lemon and two glasses of sherry; stir the custard well while pouring in this mixture; strain through a sieve into a mould. Serve with whipped cream, flavoured with wine and vanilla, or with rich cream.
A gelatine-set boiled custard, thinned with lemon and sherry and turned out of a mould. The whole thing hinges on temperature control: the custard must thicken without curdling, and the gelatine must go in warm and be strained before it can set in strings.
- Half a box of gelatineAmbiguous. A modern box of granulated gelatine holds 1 oz in four ¼-oz envelopes, so half a box is about 1½ tablespoons, which is right for a quart of liquid; period boxes were not standardised, however, and a larger one would give a rubbery set. Weigh rather than count: roughly ½ oz (14 g) of powdered gelatine per quart of custard gives a mould firm enough to unmould but still tender.
- Teacup of sugarA teacup in these books is smaller than a breakfast cup — reckon about ¾ cup, or 150 g. With the sherry and vanilla behind it this is sweet but not cloying.
- Two glasses of sherryA wine glass of the period is about 2 fl oz, so 4 fl oz total. Alcohol and acid both soften a gelatine set, which is another reason not to skimp on the gelatine.
- The custard itselfThree eggs to a quart of milk is a thin custard by design — it is meant to pour, not to stand. Cook it over a water bath, stirring, until it coats the back of a spoon at about 175°F/80°C. Past 185°F it will scramble, and no amount of straining fixes the texture.
- Dissolving the gelatineSoften it in the small amount of cold water first, then warm it gently until clear. If it goes into the custard as a cold lump it will set in threads, which may well be part of why the sieve is called for.
- Straining and mouldingStrain while everything is still warm. Rinse the mould with cold water rather than oiling it, and chill at least four to six hours, or overnight for a large mould.
- UnmouldingDip the mould to the rim in warm — not hot — water for five to ten seconds, loosen the edge with a fingertip, and invert onto a chilled plate.
- YieldAbout 1½ quarts, serving eight to ten. The accompanying cream is whipped and flavoured, not sweetened to a frosting; a tablespoon of sherry and a little vanilla to a cup of cream is enough.
The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) was compiled from contributions by "ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada" and sold in aid of the Hospital for Sick Children — generally regarded as the first Canadian fundraising cookbook, and a model copied by church and charity committees for decades after. Custard jelly belongs to the great Victorian family of moulded gelatine sweets, which had only recently become a middle-class dish: until commercially prepared gelatine became reliable and cheap in the mid-nineteenth century, a jelly meant hours of boiling calves' feet and clarifying the result with egg white. Packaged gelatine turned an ostentatious dish into an ordinary Sunday one, and cookbooks of this period are thick with the consequences.