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Gelee Aux Cerises
Clarify and strain a jelly. Add to the jelly two tablespoons maraschino, lightly mix and let cool without freezing. Open a pint can preserved cherries, drain and stone them. Set a quart jelly mould in broken ice, pour jelly into the mould one inch high and let freeze. Arrange a third of the cherries over the layer of jelly, pour another similar amount of jelly over the fruits, let freeze-and so on until all are employed. When the jelly is thoroughly firm take the mould up, carefully dip it in lukewarm water a few seconds, unmould upon a dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A layered gelatin mould that depends entirely on a jelly base the recipe assumes you already have on hand. The instructions are about assembly, not about the jelly itself.
- "A jelly" means a made jelly baseThe book expects a sweet wine or fruit jelly already prepared and clarified — historically with calf's foot or sheet gelatin. In practice use about 1 quart of liquid (fruit juice, or a light syrup with white wine) set with about 1 to 1 1/2 envelopes of powdered gelatin per pint of liquid, enough to hold sharp layers and unmould. Modern gelatin needs no clarifying with egg white unless the liquid is cloudy.
- "Let freeze" does not mean frozenIn this period "freeze" in an ice-packed mould means chilled until firmly set. If the jelly actually freezes, the water crystallises and the unmoulded dessert weeps and collapses. Broken ice around the mould, or simply the refrigerator, is enough.
- The hinge: set each layer before adding the nextEach inch of jelly must be firm to the touch before cherries and more liquid go on, or the fruit drifts and the layers bleed together. Pour the next layer when it is cool and syrupy rather than hot, so it does not melt the surface beneath.
- MaraschinoThe clear Dalmatian cherry liqueur, not the pink syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Two tablespoons in a quart of jelly is a flavouring; it will not interfere with the set.
- Preserved cherriesA pint can of cherries in syrup, drained and pitted. Modern jarred sour cherries in syrup or good canned dark sweet cherries both work; drain them well and blot them, since carried-over syrup dilutes the jelly locally and gives soft spots.
- UnmouldingFive to ten seconds in lukewarm — not hot — water, then invert. A brief dip loosens the film against the metal; longer slumps the whole surface.
- The folded napkinThe conventional service for a chilled or iced mould; the napkin will absorb condensation and meltwater running off the mould and helps keep the jelly from sliding on the platter. Still worth doing.
- YieldA quart mould serves six to eight. Assemble a day ahead; it holds well covered in the refrigerator and unmoulds more cleanly when thoroughly cold.
Moulded jellies were the showpiece of the cold table, and their prestige came from difficulty: before reliable commercial gelatin, the cook boiled calf's feet for hours and then clarified the result with egg white to get a liquid clear enough to show fruit suspended inside it. Sheet and powdered gelatin made the effect cheap and repeatable, and books of this sort put such moulds within reach of a household with an icebox and a bit of broken ice. The maraschino is Dalmatian in origin, distilled from the marasca cherry and its crushed stones around Zadar, and was often said to be the fitting perfume for cherry desserts; pairing it here with preserved cherries doubles the same flavour, one in the fruit and one in the setting liquid. The layering method, building an inch at a time so the fruit stays where it is placed, is the same technique used for savoury aspics of the period.