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Maraschino Jelly
Prepare a jelly, substituting the same quantity of maraschino for the cocoa, and serve the same.
This is a one-line variation on the cocoa jelly that precedes it in the book, so the working recipe is whatever gelatin base you already use. The substitution is the whole instruction, and it is the part that needs the most care.
- What "maraschino" means hereThe clear cherry liqueur distilled from Marasca cherries and their pits, not the jarred bright-red cocktail cherries sold under the same name in the United States. Luxardo and similar bottlings are the intended product; a cherry syrup will give the colour the original never had and will be sweeter.
- The substitution is not one-for-one in practiceCocoa in the parent recipe is presumably a dry ingredient, while maraschino is a liquid of roughly 30 percent alcohol. Alcohol weakens gelatin's set, so as a rule of thumb replacing much more than a quarter of the total liquid with liqueur risks a jelly that slumps. If the base called for several tablespoons of cocoa, treat that as a flavouring quantity rather than a volume of liquid to be matched.
- Add it off the heatDissolve the gelatin in hot liquid first, take the pan off the burner, then stir in the maraschino. Simmering the liqueur drives off both the alcohol and the almond-cherry aroma that is the entire point of the dish.
- Gelatin quantitiesOne quarter-ounce envelope of powdered gelatin, about 2 1/2 teaspoons, sets 2 cups of liquid to a spoonable jelly. Period recipes often used sheet gelatin or isinglass of unstandardized strength, so an old figure is not transferable.
- ChillingFour hours in the refrigerator, and overnight is safer if you intend to unmould it. An alcoholic jelly firms more slowly than a plain one.
- Yield and service"Serve the same" points back to the cocoa jelly, whose service instructions the reader is expected to have to hand; the recipe itself specifies neither mould size nor yield.
Maraschino is a clear liqueur made from the small sour Marasca cherry of the Dalmatian coast, distilled with the crushed stones so that it carries a distinct bitter-almond note; the industry centred on Zara, where the Luxardo house was one of several producers of the bottled product from the early nineteenth century. Period cookbooks and confectioners' manuals treat maraschino as a familiar flavouring alongside vanilla and rose water, which is why a cookbook can toss off a jelly variation in a single line and assume a bottle is in the house. The word later drifted: as the liqueur became scarce in the United States, the cherries that had been steeped in it were reproduced with brine, sugar syrup and dye, and "maraschino cherry" now means the imitation rather than the spirit. Jellies of this kind belonged to the cold-sweet repertoire of a household with reliable access to ice.