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Maraschino Jelly
(France.) Squeeze and strain the juice of an orange, a lemon, and a peach, add 12 tablespoonfuls of orange-flower water, 1/2 ounce of sugar, and the zest of a lemon. Melt the sugar in 1 glass of water before adding. Put these with 1 1/2 pints of jelly made from calf's feet or gelatine, 1/2 pint of Maraschino cordial, and the shells and beaten whites of 6 eggs. Line a mould with strawberries dipped in claret, and pour this over, through a sieve. Set on ice, and serve with custard or whipped cream.
A late-Victorian moulded wine jelly of the ambitious sort, written for cooks who already knew how to clarify a jelly and needed only the flavourings spelled out. The instructions leave out the step that makes the rest work.
- The missing step is the clarificationEgg whites and crushed shells are not an ingredient here; they are the filter. The mixture is brought slowly to a boil with them, whereupon the coagulated whites carry the cloudiness to the surface, and the whole is then poured through a jelly bag or fine-woven cloth. "Pour this over, through a sieve" is shorthand for that. Skip the heating and you have raw egg white suspended in the dessert, which no sieve will remove.
- Add the maraschino lastSpirits boiled with the jelly lose much of their aroma. Some period recipes clarify the base first and stir the cordial in off the heat before moulding, which helps the flavour survive.
- Jelly from calf's feet or gelatine1 1/2 pints of set jelly, not 1 1/2 pints of liquid stiffened later. If working from sheet or powdered gelatine, aim for the strength of a firm moulded jelly that will stand unsupported: roughly 1/2 ounce of modern powdered gelatine to a pint of liquid, bearing in mind that the alcohol and acid here both weaken the set.
- Maraschino cordialThe Dalmatian cherry liqueur — Luxardo and its kin — clear and slightly bitter from the crushed stones. It is not the pink syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries, and substituting that will give something quite different.
- Orange-flower waterTwelve tablespoonfuls is three-quarters of a cup. Strengths varied, and much of what is sold now is likely stronger than what this recipe assumed; that quantity may well taste soapy and medicinal. Start with a tablespoon or two and taste.
- "1/2 ounce of sugar" and "1 glass of water"Half an ounce is about a tablespoon, implausibly little for a pint and a half of jelly plus fruit juice — either the original is a misprint for a larger weight, or the sweetness is meant to come from the liqueur and the jelly base. A "glass" in this period is usually taken as a wineglass, about two fluid ounces, but it is not a fixed measure. Sweeten to taste before setting.
- Lining the mouldDip the strawberries in claret, set a shallow layer of clear jelly in the bottom of a chilled mould, let it firm, then arrange the fruit and add the rest in stages. Poured all at once, the berries float.
- Setting on iceAn ice-packed mould in a cold larder is a refrigerator at about 40F. Allow four to six hours, or overnight. To turn it out, dip the mould a few seconds in warm water and invert onto a wetted plate.
- YieldRather over a quart when finished — eight to ten servings with the custard or whipped cream.
With a Saucepan Over the Sea belongs to a turn-of-the-century genre of "foreign" cookbooks that gathered dishes country by country for American households with pretensions to travel, which is why this one carries the bare attribution "(France.)" and no further explanation. The liqueur itself is not French at all: maraschino is distilled from marasca cherries, stones and all, and is generally traced to Zadar on the Dalmatian coast, where it was made commercially from the eighteenth century and exported across Europe as a luxury cordial. Clear moulded jellies of this kind were among the most conspicuous things a nineteenth-century kitchen could produce, since transparency was the whole point and could only be got by clarifying with egg white and straining slowly through a bag — labour that showed on the table. Calf's-foot jelly, the older base, was still being boiled down at home when this book appeared, but packaged gelatine was already displacing it, and recipes of the period routinely offer the two as equals.