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Rum Jelly
Melt one ounce gelatin leaves with one and a half pints warm water in a saucepan, add half pound granulated sugar, the rind of a lemon and mix well for five minutes, then add the whites of three beaten eggs; mix for a minute, set the pan on the fire, gently stir, and as soon as it comes to a boil add a gill cold water; shift the pan on a corner of the range and let slowly simmer for ten minutes, skim the white scum from the surface and strain the jelly through a jelly bag of fine cloth into a bowl, add two and a half tablespoons rum, mix for half a minute and let cool off. Fill up a quart mould with the jelly and place the mould on the ice and let freeze for one hour, or until the jelly is well set; carefully immerse the mould in lukewarm water, immediately lift it up, wipe well all around, turn it upon a dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A clarified wine-style jelly, set stiff enough to stand unmoulded on a napkin. The whole procedure is a classic egg-white clarification, and the results depend on treating it as one.
- The hinge: leave the raft aloneThe hinge: leave the whites alone once they set -- Once the beaten whites go in and the pan reaches a boil, the coagulated egg gathers on the surface and traps cloud; the recipe has you skim it off. Stirring after that point breaks it up and muddies the jelly. The gill of cold water added at the boil is usually understood as checking the motion and settling the coagulated egg, though the recipe does not say so.
- Gelatin quantity and formOne ounce is about 28 g, roughly four envelopes of modern powdered gelatin, for about 3.5 cups of liquid. That is a firm, sliceable jelly meant to be turned out rather than spooned. Modern leaf gelatin is sold by bloom strength and sheets weigh about 2 g each, so weigh rather than count.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. Here it is cold water shocked into the boiling pan.
- "Shift the pan on a corner of the range"A coal range had hot and cool zones; the corner was the low-heat spot. On a modern hob this is the lowest setting, or a diffuser, holding a bare tremble rather than a simmer.
- Lemon rindPare the zest only in wide strips with no white pith, which turns the jelly bitter over a ten-minute infusion.
- StrainingA jelly bag or a double layer of damp muslin in a sieve. Let it drip; squeezing forces fine egg solids through and undoes the clarification.
- "Let freeze" means chillIn a book of this period "on the ice" meant packed in the icebox, not frozen solid. Refrigerate at normal fridge temperature; gelatin that actually freezes weeps and goes granular on thawing. One hour is optimistic for a full quart mould, allow three to four.
- RumTwo and a half tablespoons in a quart is a scenting, not a spirit drink, and it goes in off the heat so the aroma survives. Adding much more will soften the set.
- Unmoulding and yieldA few seconds in lukewarm water only; longer and the surface slumps. A quart mould gives six to eight servings.
The International Cook Book is the work of Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and its jellies belong squarely to the professional repertoire of the period, when a clear moulded jelly turned out onto a folded napkin was a standard restaurant sweet. The technique descends from much older English and French practice: before commercial sheet gelatin, cooks boiled calves' feet or dissolved isinglass, then clarified the murky result with beaten egg white and strained it through a conical jelly bag, the whole process taking most of a day. Manufactured gelatin, widely available from the later nineteenth century, collapsed that labour into minutes and made flavoured jellies of every kind, wine, rum, punch, fruit, a fixture of both the hotel dining room and the ambitious domestic table.