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Preserved Peach Jelly
Preserved peach juice makes a dainty jelly, flavored with a tablespoonful of brandy, maraschino, and made in exactly the same way that the orange jelly was made. Bits of rich preserved peaches or of brandy peaches, may be scattered through it. Any of these jellies are very ornamental served in an ornamental border mold, with the center filled with whipped cream.
The mistake made in preparing these simple jellies made from gelatine, is to use too much water and depend upon the weakened fruit for a jelly. Only water enough to soak and to dissolve the gelatine is needed. The larger part of the jelly must be fruit juices. Some wine, liquor or brandy should be used as a flavor. Few articles of food are more insipid than a jelly made of weakened fruit juice.
This is a variation rather than a standalone formula — it assumes you have already read the orange jelly recipe and have jars of home-preserved peaches on the shelf. The one line worth holding onto is the author's own: the liquid should be almost entirely fruit juice, with water used only to bloom and dissolve the gelatine.
- Preserved peach juiceThis means the sweet syrup drained from home-canned or brandied peaches, not fresh peach puree. Syrup from a good jar of commercial peaches in light syrup works, though it may want sharpening with a squeeze of lemon.
- Gelatine proportionsThe parent recipe is not reproduced here, so the quantity is genuinely open. As a working figure, one 1/4-oz envelope (about 7 g) of granulated gelatine sets 2 cups of liquid softly; for a mold that must stand up on a plate, use one and a half envelopes per 2 cups.
- BloomingSoften the gelatine in about 1/4 cup cold water for five minutes, then dissolve it in a little hot juice rather than adding more water. That is exactly the point the author is making about weakened jelly — the water is a solvent, not an ingredient.
- MaraschinoIn this period this is the clear Dalmatian cherry liqueur, not the syrup from a jar of dyed cocktail cherries. Substitute kirsch or a good brandy if you cannot find it.
- Alcohol and settingA tablespoon or two of spirits in a quart of jelly is harmless, but much more than that weakens the set. If you increase the brandy, increase the gelatine accordingly.
- Suspending the fruitBits of preserved peach will sink to the bottom of a warm jelly. Chill the mixture until it is the consistency of raw egg white, then fold the fruit in and pour into the mold.
- Border moldA ring mold. Rinse it with cold water before filling, chill at least four hours, and unmold by dipping the outside in warm — not hot — water for a few seconds. Fill the center with lightly sweetened whipped cream just before serving.
- YieldIf you make up a quart in a ring mold, expect six to eight servings as a dessert course; the original gives no quantities.
Molded gelatine desserts belong to a particular moment in American cooking. Through most of the nineteenth century a clear jelly meant hours of boiling calves' feet or clarifying isinglass, and it signalled a cook with time and staff; by the 1890s granulated gelatine sold in packets had put the same effect within reach of a household with one servant or none. Books of this period are full of the results, and also — as here — of complaints about them, because the cheap ingredient invited cheap dilution. The author's insistence that "the larger part of the jelly must be fruit juices" is a direct swipe at the watery, faintly sweet molds of the era. The recipe also depends on a well-stocked preserve closet: peaches put up in syrup or in brandy were standard summer work, and the recipe notes only that peach juice makes a dainty jelly. Maraschino, the flavoring called for, is a liqueur distilled from Dalmatian marasca cherries and was a fashionable dessert flavoring of the era, well before the name attached itself to the bright red cocktail cherry.