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Macedoine of Fruit
Wine jelly and fruit in alternate layers frozen together. The fruit may be of any and all sorts, and may be candied or preserved, or slices of pear, apple, etc.; may be boiled in syrup and then drained; the mould must be filled after the jelly has begun to form, but before it is stiff, and the first layer should be of jelly; when filled place the mould in salt and ice prepared as for freezing ice cream ; cover closely, and let it remain several hours.
This is a moulded layered jelly, set in a bucket of ice and salt rather than a refrigerator. The whole thing hinges on one moment: the jelly must be at the point of thickening — syrupy, not liquid, not yet firm — before any fruit goes in, or the pieces sink and the layers merge.
- What "wine jelly" meansA sweetened gelatin jelly flavoured with sherry, madeira, port or claret, usually with lemon and sugar. Period recipes leaned on calf's-foot stock or isinglass; a modern equivalent uses powdered or leaf gelatin, and because alcohol weakens a set, plan on a slightly firmer jelly than a plain fruit one.
- Layering windowPour the first layer of clear jelly, chill until it is tacky but not solid, then arrange fruit and add more part-set jelly. Repeat. Warm jelly poured onto a set layer will melt the join; fully set jelly will not bond at all.
- Fruit preparationCandied and preserved fruit must be drained and blotted, or the surrounding syrup will thin the jelly at each contact point. Pears and apples poached in syrup should be cool and quite dry before they go in.
- Fruit that will not workFresh pineapple, kiwi, papaya, mango and fresh figs contain proteases that digest gelatin and leave a soup. Canned or cooked versions of these are fine, as heat destroys the enzyme.
- Salt and ice, and what to substitute"Prepared as for freezing ice cream" means crushed ice packed around the sealed mould with coarse salt worked through it; period directions vary, commonly somewhere between three and eight parts ice to one of salt, a mixture that holds a temperature well below freezing. A freezer set to around 0F does the same job; several hours there, or overnight in the refrigerator if you want it merely set rather than frozen.
- It will not freeze hardSugar and wine both depress the freezing point, so even in an ice-and-salt bath the result is a dense, semi-frozen jelly rather than an ice block. That is the intended texture — spoonable, cold, slightly granular at the edges.
- UnmouldingDip the sealed mould briefly in warm water, then invert onto a chilled dish. A metal mould releases far better than glass, and a thin film of neutral oil wiped inside beforehand helps.
- Yield and servingA mould of this kind was served as a dessert course, portioned small. Serve it at once with a little whipped cream or a plain sweet biscuit; it slumps quickly at room temperature.
Macédoine is French kitchen slang for a mixture of many small things — the name is generally traced to the Macedonian empire and its many peoples, and by the nineteenth century it covered both diced-vegetable garnishes and, as here, assorted fruit set in jelly. Recipes like this one belonged to the age of the ice house and the pail of salt and ice: a household that could produce a moulded, part-frozen dessert in summer was advertising its ice supply as much as its cook. The instructions assume a great deal of knowledge the reader was expected to have already — how a wine jelly is made, how an ice-cream freezer is packed — which is characteristic of compiled community cookbooks, where contributors wrote for neighbours who cooked much as they did.