Home › The World's Kitchen › Fish Jelly
Fish Jelly
Strain galantine broth through a cheesecloth into a tureen, skim fat off surface and let thoroughly cool. Melt two ounces leaf gelatine in an enamelled saucepan with a half pint jelly, and when thoroughly melted add balance of fish jelly, two branches chervil and a half gill sherry. Beat up four whole eggs for four minutes in a bowl, add to pan and briskly whisk on fire until it comes to a boil. Pour in two tablespoons vinegar, shift pan to corner of range and let simmer for an hour and a half. Strain jelly through a damp, double cheesecloth into a bowl, set it on ice until thoroughly thickened and use as directed. After using jelly required for galantine, cover balance with a towel and keep in ice box for further use.
This is not a dish but a component: a clarified fish aspic for coating and glazing a galantine, written in the shorthand of a professional garde-manger who assumed the reader already had a stockpot going. A few of its instructions read strangely now.
- The hinge: whisk only until it boils, then stopThe beaten eggs must be whisked constantly while the liquid comes up to a boil so they disperse, and then left absolutely alone as the raft forms and sets. Stirring after that point breaks the coagulated egg into the broth and the jelly will never clear.
- "Half pint jelly" is ambiguousThe text seems to mean melting the gelatine in half a pint of the cooled galantine broth before adding the rest, but as written it is genuinely unclear. Treat it as a half-pint measure of the same broth.
- Old measuresA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of sherry is about 2 fl oz, or 4 tablespoons. Two ounces of leaf gelatine is roughly 28 modern 2 g sheets, setting a jelly stiff enough to slice and much firmer than a modern aspic, which uses about 1/4 oz powdered gelatine per pint for a coating glaze.
- An enamelled pan for a reasonBare iron, aluminium or copper will grey the jelly and take on the vinegar. Enamel, stainless or glass keeps it colourless, which is the entire point of the exercise.
- "Corner of range" means the coolest spotOn a coal range that was the low corner of the top plate. On a modern hob it is the lowest setting with a diffuser: the surface should barely tremble, never bubble.
- Ninety minutes is longNinety minutes is long by modern standards -- a bare-simmer clarification is often judged done well inside that time. Pull it once the liquid under the raft runs clear.
- StrainingWet and wring the double cheesecloth first, and ladle rather than pour so the raft stays intact. Let it drip; pressing it forces sediment through.
- Keeping itA cooked, gelatine-set fish jelly is a good bacterial medium. The original leaves the balance under a towel in the icebox; refrigerate it covered and use it within two days, and bring any leftover back to a full boil before re-melting for a second coating.
The International Cook Book (1911) was the work of Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and pages like this one show how thoroughly he wrote from a professional kitchen rather than a domestic one. Clarified aspic was the backbone of the cold larder in the Escoffier era: fish jelly glazed poached salmon and galantines, filled the gaps in raised pies, and was chopped as a garnish around cold platters. The technique here — the egg raft, the acid, the long slow poach, the damp cloth — is the classic consommé-style clarification applied to a gelatinous fish broth, and it is essentially unchanged in professional practice today. What has changed is the taste for it; the mirror-bright coated centrepiece that justified this much labour largely disappeared from restaurant service in the second half of the twentieth century.