Jellies and Their Moulds E-Book

Peter Brears

• Herausgeber: Marion Boyars
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Peter Brears has a long acquaintance with jellies in every guise. He was fed them in childhood, he turned to curating their moulds and associated artefacts while director of York and Leeds museums, he has made them for innumerable historical food shows and events.And jelly is a much bigger thing than some packet from the supermarket mixed with boiling water. In the first place, it was not factory-made gelatine that did the setting, but any number of ingenious adaptations of kitchen materials and ingredients. In the second, it was not just a simple clear, coloured solid, but an optical prism to show off and transform the foods contained within it. It was the cook's greatest resource for introducing colour, variety and delight into the table display.The book sketches in the history of jellies, particularly in England, and discusses their place within a meal; gives several recipes based on the various setting agents (carrageen, gelatine, isinglass) and also for cereal moulds (flummery, tapioca, semolina, rice, cornflour, etc.); describes how jellies may be assembled by layering, embedding, lining and inclusion of fruit, nuts, gold, etc.; and gives an excellent illustrated account of the various forms of jelly moulds.

Leseprobe

Frontispiece. Classic jellies of the Victorian period: (1) Mosaic of lemon jelly and custard, 1891; (2) Oranges à la Bellevue, 1855; (3) Timbale à la Versailles, 1891; (4) Ribbon jelly, 1855; (5) Macédoine jelly, 1855; (6) Bavaroise à la Impériale, 1891; (7) Jelly à l’Andalouse, c. 1900; (8) Rice à la Parisienne, 1888.

First published in 2010 by Prospect Books, Allaleigh House, Blackawton, Totnes, Devon TQ97DL.

© 2010, text and drawings, Peter Brears. © 2010, colour photographs, the estate of Peter Williams.

The author asserts his right to be identified as the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

ISBN 978-1-903018-76-7 ePub ISBN 978-1-909248-24-3 PRC ISBN 978-1-909248-25-0

Typeset by Tom Jaine.

Printed and bound in Malta by Gutenburg Press Ltd.

CONTENTS

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE Of Gelatin

CHAPTER TWO Of Jellies, Gums & Starches

CHAPTER THREE Medieval Jellies

CHAPTER FOUR Tudor Jellies

CHAPTER FIVE Stuart Jellies

CHAPTER SIX Georgian Jellies

CHAPTER SEVEN Victorian Jellies & their Moulds

CHAPTER EIGHT The Twentieth Century & its Moulds

CHAPTER NINE The Repertoire

Bibliography

General index

Recipe index

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Colour plates

i. A seventeenth-century laid tart or tart royal, filled with jellies.

ii Mrs Raffald’s jellies of the 1760s.

iii Oranges en Rubans or à la Bellevue were introduced in the Regency, but remained a Victorian favourite.

iv Louis Ude published a recipe for this marbled cream in 1813

v The Belgrave mould of 1850 introduced spiral columns of coloured creams into jelly.

vi The Brunswick Star mould of 1864 (left) and the Alexandra Cross mould of 1863 both used inner liners to form internal star-and cross-shaped columns of white jelly.

vii Mrs A.B. Marshall’s mosaic jelly of 1891 is lined with rings of set custard.

viii Some High Victorian jellies.

Drawings and reproductions

Frontispiece: Classic jellies of the Victorian period 2

1 Advertisements for ‘patent’ gelatines

2 Medieval jellies

3 Stuart jellies

4 Georgian jellies

5 Georgian leaches

6 Elizabeth Raffald’s jellies, 1769

7 Wedgwood moulds

8 Georgian moulds

9 Regency jellies

10 Prints of mould-makers’ factories

11, 12, 13. Minton jelly moulds

14. W.T. Copeland & Sons’ catalogue of shapes

15, 16, 17. Copper jelly moulds, from the catalogue of Herbert Benham & Co.

18, 19. Copper jelly moulds, from the catalogue of A.F. Leale

20. Late nineteenth-century makers’ and retailers’ stamps found on copper jelly moulds

21. Specimen page from Mrs Marshall’s Book of Moulds

22. Moulds for specific Victorian jellies

23. The rib mould

24. Moulds designed by Alexis Soyer before 1846

25. Tinplate moulds made by J.H. Hopkins & Son

26. Tinplate moulds made by Sellman & Hill

27. Tinplate moulds from Mrs Marshall’s Book of Moulds

28. Stoneware and pottery moulds from Pearson & Co., Joseph Bourne & Son, Pountney & Co., and Leeds

29. Moulds from the catalogue of C.T. Maling & Sons

30. Shelley moulds of 1922; new shapes introduced by Spode c. 1902–1910 and 2002

31. Earthenware moulds made by Burgess & Leigh and by Joseph Unwin & Co.

32. Tinned steel jelly moulds from E.T. Everton

33, 34, 35. Tinned steel jelly moulds from Treliving & Smith, ironmongers of London.

36. White-enamelled steel moulds by Orme, Evans & Co., Macfarlane & Robinson, and J.A. Bratt & Sons

37. Aluminium jelly moulds, 1920s and 1930s

38. ‘Diamond Aluminium Ware’ moulds

39. Plastic moulds and aluminium moulds, 1930s–2010

40. Jellies in orange peels

41. Moulded rice dishes of around 1900

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Iwould first like to thank the Gelatine Manufacturers of Europe, who, through Team Saatchi and its representative Beverley Wigg, asked me to organize the first British Jelly Festival in 1995, and to thank Chivers who asked me to lead the week-long events which culminated in Ireland’s first National Jelly Day in 1996. These projects concentrated the mind on a previously neglected area of our culinary heritage to such a degree that my life appeared to be dominated by jelly for several years. The success of these events would not have been possible, however, without considerable practical help from my friends Marc and B. Meltonville, Richard Fitch and Robin Mitchener, and the cooperation of Diana Owen of the National Trust’s Petworth House in Sussex, Terry Suthers, Director of Harewood House Trust in Yorkshire and Richard Pailthorpe, manager of the Duke of Northumberland’s seat at Syon House, Middlesex. Chivers’ in-house staff could not have been more helpful, nor the cooks at Dublin Zoo, who welcomed me into their kitchens. Particular thanks are also due Rosie Allan at The North of England Open Air Museum at Beamish for her great help when researching mould-manufacturers’ catalogues and to Pam Woolescroft of Spode for access to the catalogues and other resources in their collections.

I would also like to extend my warmest thanks to Mrs Susan Houghton for contributing so much to this book, and my publisher Tom Jaine for the care he has taken in putting it into production. Finally, I must thank the late Peter Williams, one of the finest still-life and food photographers of his generation, for his work at the Jelly Festivals where we first met. His great skills in composition and lighting are self evident on the front cover and elsewhere in this volume.

Peter Brears, Leeds 2010

INTRODUCTION

Today’s jellies tend to fall into the cheap and cheerful category of food. You can buy a basic pack of soluble flavoured jelly squares for 9p in some supermarkets, and it only takes a couple of minutes to dissolve them in hot water, pour them into a bowl and leave them to set to provide a treat for the kids. This approach is economical, trouble-free and efficient, but it completely undervalues and underplays the true potential of probably our most versatile and exciting of foodstuffs.

Jellies are unique in their range of physical properties. Although they are virtually tasteless, they can instantly absorb any chosen flavour drawn from fruits and spices, as well as readily dissolving sugars, wines and spirits throughout their mass. Having no texture of their own, they can take on those of creams, cereals, fruit purées, ground nuts and many other things, or they can be whipped up into foams. They can also be used to embed fresh, preserved or candied fruits, or stiff custards and other jellies of contrasting flavour and colour. Being colourless at the outset, they immediately take on the widest variety of tones, tinctures and degrees of opacity as imparted by all manner of edible liquids and colourings. They have no shape of their own, but take on the shape of any mould or vessel into which they are poured. This list of attributes is already impressive, but has yet to include their final most important and unique characteristics. The first of these is perfect transparency. No other food is so capable of allowing light to pass through it, reflected and refracted by the facets of its outer surfaces. The second is dynamic movement, the wobble factor, always a delight to the eye. The third, just as important, is their capacity to slowly release their flavours and textures into the mouth, prolonging the pleasure and appreciation of ingredients which otherwise would be much more rapidly swallowed.

Over the last seven hundred years generations of cooks have laboured hard and long to convert the most unpromising of waste animal products into the finest luxurious, succulent, attractive and delicious high-status jellies. In the courts of medieval and Tudor England, they were only served at the tables of kings, queens, princes and nobles, so great was their prestige. Their use then slowly percolated to the gentry class below, before entering into general use with the introduction of prepared gelatins in the mid-nineteenth century.

My first detailed study of early jellies started in 1995 with a ’phone call from Beverley Wigg of Team Saatchi, who had been commissioned by the Gelatine Manufacturers of Europe to promote jelly-making in the home. The approach was to be historical, restoring the lost status of jellies by recreating the most impressive examples in the kitchens of great country houses. Unfortunately, it seemed no-one knew anything about early jellies, and no country-house owners were interested in the project. Having myself researched, trialled and published some initial studies of jellies, as well as being involved in the restoration of some large country-house kitchens, I was asked to meet the clients and see what could be done. The result was Britain’s first Jelly Festival, which took place at Petworth House, Sussex, in the first week of August 1995.

Living and working in the original servants’ quarters, we spent a few days recreating the most interesting jellies made between the 1390s and 1930s, only to discover that virtually none had set sufficiently to be turned out, since this was one of the hottest summers on record. Much re-melting and re-moulding with stronger gelatins followed, so that there were approaching a hundred jellies ranged along the great kitchen table and dressers on the first morning. As soon as the doors opened and members of the public began to flow through, it was obvious that it was going to be a great success. Everyone looked remarkably happy, grandparents seeing jellies which brought back memories of past events which had involved jellies, and children looking in wide-eyed wonder at the jelly lions or bunny-rabbits feasting on jelly grass and carrots. There was also great conversation between the generations, and lots of repartee between visitors and cooks. The message was clear, English people still love a good jelly. So do the press.

Both national and local media were ‘All of a Quiver!’ with these ‘Jelly Japes’, ‘Shaking all over’ as we were ‘Breaking the Mould’, explaining ‘The Shape of Things to Come’ in this ‘Perfect Setting’. The festival was ‘Jelly Good Fun’ and we were all ‘Jelly Good Fellows’, going ‘Great Shakes’ and even ‘Throwing a Wobbly!’ Such raucous reportage was just what was needed. Jelly was back in the news. This event lasted a week, and was enjoyed by many hundreds of visitors, similar crowds coming to subsequent festivals at Harewood House near Leeds over Easter 1996, and at Syon House over Easter 1997. In the meantime Country Life informed me that I was now one of their ‘Living National Treasures’ as a ‘Traditional English Jelly-maker’, later, thankfully, modified to ‘Food Historian’.

About this time, late one evening, someone with a deep and strong Northern Irish accent ’phoned to ask, ‘Are you the jelly person?’ This sent a shiver down my spine. In the mid-1970s I had stood in my museum and watched the minutes tick by the deadline for an IRA bomb threat, which the British security forces had informed me was probably real; did the man want ‘jelly’ or ‘gelli’? On asking who was calling, I was told it was Chivers of Ireland: ‘Could you do for the Irish jelly what you’ve done for the English jelly?’ The result was one of the most enjoyable of all jelly experiences. It was arranged for me to do a week of historic jelly demonstrations in an elegant Georgian town-house hotel in Dublin in July 1996, with full media coverage. Just before departing, Chivers rang to confirm the arrangements, then announcing that the venue had been changed.

‘Why?’

‘The orang-utan!’ Apparently this recently-born primate had been rejected by its parents and was being nurtured by the keepers. ‘It’s in bed with them, wearing nappies, feeding from the bottle, and loads of folk are going to see it, so we’ve cancelled your place at the hotel, and put you in the Zoo with the monkeys.’

Although unexpected, this was good promotional policy. Over the next week, the staff at Dublin Zoo’s kitchens gave me a great welcome, a bench to myself, and full access to their fine refrigerated larder. It was hard work, but enormous fun; punctuated by demonstration sessions for the food-writers of Ireland and the nation’s media, the most delightfully enthusiastic and intelligent of audiences. The long tables of jellies, both English and Irish, created much interest and conversation, ‘Why had I adopted such an injellyectual approach?’

The television reporter from RTE couldn’t understand why a foaming pint of Guinness stood amid the jellies.

‘What’s the black stuff doing there?’

‘It’s a jelly.’

‘No it isn’t – its the Black Stuff – I should know.’

‘It’s a jelly.’

‘Prove it.’

At this point the glass was turned upside down, the Guinness and its foam remaining firmly in place.

‘Dear God! The Englishman has jellified the Guinness! Why, on earth would anyone want to do a thing like that?’

Its potential for being consumed while lying helplessly horizontal at the end of a night of social inebriation was then explained, the point taken, the new product sampled, and pronounced good.

Surely no other foodstuff could ever create such careless happiness, frivolity and enjoyment. However, jelly has its serious side too. I published the first outline study of its seven-hundred year history as ‘Transparent Pleasures – The Story of the Jelly’ in Petits Propos Culinaires, volumes 53 and 54, in 1996– 7. This went on to win the Oxford Symposium on Food and Food History’s Sophie Coe Prize in 1997. The present book extends the story and provides greater detail. In order to be as practical as possible, the majority of the historic recipes have been re-written in modern form, but follow closely the working methods and proportions of ingredients in the original texts. Where gelatin was specified, the same proportions have been retained, although they may need to be adapted to meet the setting qualities of modern gelatin, or particular temperature conditions when serving. Where the earlier recipes start off with calf ’s feet, hart’s horn, ivory dust or isinglass, however, their place has been taken by an appropriate quantity of gelatin as a workable alternative.

The recipes are arranged in approximate date order, convenient for those who wish to make jellies to form part of a recreated meal of any chosen period. The same approach is taken for the moulds. Reproductions of pages from manufacturers’ and retailers’ catalogues also offer a substantial amount of new information for all those who collect them as a hobby. Where moulds are known to have been made for the production of a particular jelly, the associated recipe is also given, thus uniting the frequently disparate worlds of the cook and the collector.

Figure 1. Advertisements such as these promoted the use of improved ‘patent’ gelatines in the mid-nineteenth century.

The substance which is the basis of the jellies into which certain animal tissues (skin, tendons, ligaments, the matrix of bones, etc.) are converted when treated by hot water for some time. It is amorphous, brittle, without taste or smell, transparent, and of a faint yellow tint; and is composed of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulphur.

This definition provided by the Oxford English Dictionary covers all the essential characteristics of this remarkable substance.1 It is based on collagen, a stiff fibrous protein found in all animal skin and connective tissue. Instead of being a single molecule it has three separate molecules twisted around each other like strands in a rope to form a triple helix structure, tough and almost inedible. Only by heating the collagen above some 70°C does the helix unwind, its separate strand-like molecules interacting with each other to form a random three-dimensional network. This holds the surrounding water in place, making it behave more like a solid than a liquid, in other words, a jelly. This process is closely governed by temperature, the molecules separating every time they exceed about 30°C, and re-connecting when they fall beneath about 15°C, phenomena we know as melting and setting.2 If raw egg-whites, for instance, are mixed into the melted jelly and then heated, they form per-manent molecular links with the gelatin strands and so form a jelly which cannot be re-melted. Similarly the addition of certain enzymes, such as those in fresh pineapple or kiwi fruit, can break down the links in the gelatin structure, causing it to become unsettable.

Medieval cooks were certainly ignorant of the scientific explanation behind the formation of jelly, but this did not prevent them from developing considerable skill in its prepa-ration. When any of their meats and fishes with a high collagen content had been boiled to tenderness and then allowed to cool, they could not fail to have noticed how they set to firmness, the fats rising to the surface and the sediment dropping to the bottom. Once tasted, they would appreciate the pleasure of feeling it melt on their tongues, the flavours it released and the satisfying glutinous smoothness it left in the mouth. From this stage it would take little ingenuity to start to make jelly not as a by-product, but as a dish in its own right.

Probably the earliest English recipe for ‘jelly’ comes from a manuscript written in the first quarter of the fourteenth century:3

Gelee. Vihs isodeen in win & water & saffron & paudre of gynger & kanele, galingal, & beo idon in a vessel ywryen clanlicke; ye colour quyte.

Experience shows that this method of just cooking fish in white wine, saffron, ginger, cinnamon and galingal only produces a spicy fish stew, nothing remotely resembling anything we could ever describe as a jelly. A further recipe of about 1381 is similarly unpromising:4

For to make mete gelee that it be wel chariaunt, tak wyte wyn & a perty of water & saffroun & gode spicis & flesh of piggys or of hennys, or fresch fisch, & boyle tham togedere; & after, wan yt ys boylyd & cold, dres yt in dischis & serve forthe.

This thick pork or chicken stew might just hold itself together in a serving dish, if the weather was cold, but again lacks sufficient gelatin to produce a good jelly. However, the same manuscript also contains the following:5

For to make a gely, tak hoggys fet other pyggys, other erys, other pertrichys, othere chiconys, & do hem togedere & seth hem in a pot; & do in hem flowre of canel and clowys hole or grounde. Do thereto vinegere, & tak & do the broth in a clere vessel of all thys, & tak the flesch & kerf yt in smale morselys & do yt therein. Tak powder of gelyngale & cast above & lat yt kele. Tak bronchys of ye lorere tre & styk over it, & kep yt al so longe as thou wilt & serve yt forth.

This is an excellent recipe, one which any traditional farmer’s wife or pork butcher would immediately recognize as a stiff, jellied brawn. The feet and ears or porkers and suckling pigs were among the best sources of gelatin, giving a rich, glutinous stock. Proof of how successful this recipe would be is provided by the following version published almost six hundred years later in The Farmer’s Weekly. It was sent in by Mrs H.M. Diamond of Worcestershire.6

2 pig’s feet, 1lb of shoulder steak, ham scraps … pepper, salt. Stew the … pig’s feet very slowly with the shoulder steak and ham scraps. Season with pepper and salt. When thoroughly cooked cut up the meat into small pieces, and pour with the liquor into a mould which has been well rinsed in cold water, then leave to set and turn out next day... This dish is economical and easily prepared – which is what we require in these days when, as farmers’ wives, it is necessary to consider expenses and our time.

The first evidence of care being taken to ensure that jelly stock was being filtered and reduced separately to ensure good clarity and firmness comes from recipes such as the following of around 1390. After being well boiled with the meat or fish, the stock was to be passed:7

thurgh a cloth in to an erthen panne … Lat it seeth {boil or simmer}& skym it wel. Whan it is ysode {boiled}, dof the grees clene: cowche {the flesh or fish}on chargours & cole the sewe thorow a cloth onoward & serve it forth colde.

The jellies served at the earl of Derby’s table were certainly being clarified by careful filtration at this time, his accounts for 1393 recording money spent:8 ‘ex prop iii vergis tele pro 1 gelecloth xviiid.’

The late fourteenth century saw the first documented use of calf ’s feet as a source of gelatin, this appearing in a recipe in the Forme of Curye ‘compiled of the chef Maister Cokes of kyng Richard the Se{cu}nde … the best and ryallest vyaund{er}of alle cristen {K}ynges.’9 By the fifteenth century calf ’s feet were being used to create a clear firm-setting jelly stock which was then used as a separate culinary medium in its own right. In some recipes small chickens and the sides of sucking pigs were poached in it, the stock then being re-warmed, flavoured, coloured, skimmed, strained and eventually poured over the jointed meat in a dish, and left to set. To check if the stock would form a jelly, the cook was advised to ‘put thin{e} hande ther-on; & if thin{e}hand waxe clammy; it is a syne of godenesse.’10 In others, the jelly stock was mixed with almond milk, sugar and colourings to create what was then called Vyaunde leche, a ‘sliceable food’,11 and, in later centuries, blancmange.

Obviously calfs-foot jelly could not be consumed on fish days, when the Church banned the eating of meat. These included every Friday, (the day of the crucifixion), Saturday (dedicated to the Virgin Mary) and Wednesday (when Judas accepted the thirty pieces of silver). If jellies were to be served on these days, they would have to be based on a strong fish stock. Instead of calf’s feet, barbell, conger eel, plaice or thornback were boiled in fish stock until they would jellify. To test this, the cook was to ‘take up som thereof, & pour hit on the breed of a disch, & let hit be cold; & ther thu shall se where it be chargeaunt; or els take more fisch that woll gely, & put hit theryn.’12 If it still would not set, another contemporary recipe advised further simmering with ‘Soundys of watteryd Stokkefysshe, or ellys Skynnys, or Plays.’ The ‘sounds’ were swim-bladders, at this time those of the cod, which were already being used to mix fine paints and make glue for book-binding in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They were ideal for making jellies too.13

By the end of the medieval period the techniques for making clear gelatinous stocks were thoroughly understood and practised in all major kitchens. The use of ‘jelly’ as a word to describe those versions containing pieces of cooked meat or fish was now rapidly falling out of common parlance. From now on it was to be restricted to the clarified, sweetened and flavoured varieties which we still recognize as jellies today. Most jellies remained relatively flaccid, however, lying dormant either in or on their dishes, even those cut in slices barely standing up by themselves, and being totally unable to maintain the shape given by a mould.

In the early 1500s a more effective gelling ingredient began to be imported from Europe. This was isinglass, the swim-bladder or ‘sound’ of the sturgeon, composed almost entirely of gelatin. It was subject to a high level of customs duty, at £1 13s. 4d. per 100 lb or 4d. the pound in 1545.14 Most appears to have been employed in making glues and sizes, but it had certainly entered culinary use by the 1590s when Thomas Dawson instructed cooks to:15

Take a quart of newe milke, and three ounces weight of Isinglasse, halfe a pounde of beaten suger, and stirre them together, and let it boile half a quarter of an hower till it be thicke, stirring them al the while.

The interest in this recipe is twofold; firstly it assumes that the reader is already familiar with isinglass, suggesting that it had been used for jellymaking for some time, and secondly, it boils insinglass in milk for half an hour. In this, it exploits the great distinction between isinglass and other forms of gelatin; it can be boiled with milk without splitting it into curds and whey. This problem always occurs if a milk and gelatin solution is heated above around 70°C.

Both gelatin and isinglass continued to be the principal ingredients used for making jellies throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The only piece of specialized equipment required for their preparation was the jelly-bag, an open-topped cone of cloth used for finely filtering the stock. They had already been made of woollen cloth, probably flannel, for centuries, the Durham Priory account roll for 1516-17 recording:16 ‘Pro una uln. Panni lanei pro le gelypoke 8d.’

Unless kept hot, the jelly set within them instead of dripping through. Patrick Lamb, Master Cook to Charles II, James II, William and Mary and Queen Anne, prepared his jelly bags by washing them in cold water, drying them away from any smoke, filling them with the stock, and then hanging them on a spit, apparently close to the fire, to keep their contents liquid.17

By the mid-eighteenth century, ladies who wished to display fine jellies on their dining tables were being offered a completely trouble-free way of acquiring them: they could buy them ready-made from a professional confectioner. In Manchester, for example, they could call at Mrs Elizabeth Raffald’s at 12 Market Place for all their ‘Creams, Jellies, Flummery … which any lady may examine at pleasure … daily, in my own shop’.18 Her sister Mary Whitaker similarly offered ‘Jellies, Creams, Flummery, Fish Ponds, Transparent Puddings’ from her shop opposite the King’s Head in Salford.19 In fashionable Bath, the newspapers carried advertisements for:20

JOSEPH BICK, PASTRY COOK and Confectioner Remov’d from Broad-Street … Jellies fresh every day 3s. per Doz. Blancmange and Jelly ornamented for Dishes, Compote, Creams …

Making a reliably clear, firm and successful jelly from basic ingredients remained a challenge for most everyday cooks and housewives. What they needed was a source of pre-prepared gelatin, one they could keep in their store cupboards and use at their convenience.

The isinglass or ‘Muscovy Talc’ imported from Russia most closely met these requirements. In Russia the ‘nervous and mucilaginous parts of {sturgeon}were boiled to the consistency of a jelly, they spread it on a leaf of paper, and form it into cakes, in which state it is sent to us.’21 This would form the basis of the ‘Adams’ prepared Isinglass’ being made by John Adams of Cushion Court, Old Broad Street, London, in 1824.22 In 1847 G.P. Swinborne took out patent no. 11975 for the purification of both isinglass and gelatin by ‘the solvent power of water alone.’

In the patent, George Philbrick Swinborne, of Pimlico, stated that to date it had been the general practice to break down hides or skins with acids, alkalis and mechanical means, reducing them to pulp in a paper-grinding machine, and then clarify them with blood. In contrast, his new method took fresh hides or skins, free from hair, cut them into fine shavings, soaked them in water for five or six hours, then renewed the water two or three times each day until no smell remained. Having been drained, they were put into a vessel with hot, not boiling water, to extract the gelatin, which was then either run off as a clear solution, or strained through a linen cloth on to beds of slate to set. Next it was hung up in nets to dry and finally cut up for packaging.

For his isinglass, cod sounds or other gelatinous parts of fish were treated in the same manner.

To confirm the quality of their products, Swinborne’s published a report commissioned from Professor W.T. Brande, F.R.S. and J.T. Cooper, the leading analytical chemists of the day. They stated that the ‘Patent Refined Isinglass’ was ‘perfectly clear from colour, taste and smell; makes a clear solution in hot water, leaves no deposit {and}is stronger, firmer, and more durable than that prepared from the same proportions of Russian Isinglass.’ As for the gelatin: ‘though it is not so free from colour nor so powerful a gelatiniser, yet it can be produced at a much lower price, may become very generally useful, especially as if kept dry it will undergo no change in any climate … there are many other Gelatines in the market, which we deem objectionable.’23

By reprinting this report as part of a strong advertising campaign which continued over the following half century or more, Swinborne’s isinglass and gelatin became one of the leading brands supplied to the wholesale and retail trade. Their products came in elegantly printed and sealed packets, those for isinglass containing one ounce, and the gelatin, enough to set a quart of liquid. The housewives and cooks who bought them were virtually guaranteed good, trouble-free and attractive jellies, especially if they followed the recipes published on the packets and in booklets such as The Pastry Cook & Confectioner which went through fifteen editions between 1879 and 1911.

In mid-Victorian England there was an increasing unease about all manufactured products, for adulteration was rife. In 1855 one analyst decided to buy samples of isinglass from twenty-seven of the leading London grocers and Italian warehousemen, to see if they were genuine. Those of Fortnum & Mason of Picadilly passed the test, selling it for 1s 2d the ounce, so did:

VICKERS GENUINE RUSSIAN ISINGLASS FOR INVALIDS AND CULINARY USE

This article is guaranteed to be prepared from the pure Russian isinglass, as imported, and has not undergone any other process besides being passed through rollers and cut into shreds, for the purpose of making it soluble. Purchasers who are desirous of protecting themselves from the adulteration which is now extensively practised are recommended to ask for “VICKERS’ GENUINE RUSSIAN ISINGLASS” in sealed packets (containing one ounce, two ounces, a quarter of a pound, or one pound), that being the surest guarantee for their always obtaining a really PURE AND UNADULTERATED ARTICLE.

FACTORY, 23 LITTLE BRITAIN, LONDON.

The results of the analysis confirmed the need for caution. More than a third of the suppliers fobbed off customers seeking isinglass with cheap gelatin which ought to have cost around 6d. the ounce, instead charging up to 1s. 4d. the ounce thus more than doubling their profits. Clearly it was worthwhile to buy a branded isinglass with an impeccable reputation, such as Swinborne’s. However, when the chemist bought a sealed packet of ‘SWINBORNE’S PATENT REFINED ISINGLASS’ from Sidney, Manduell, & Wells of 8 Ludgate Hill, he found it contained nothing but ordinary gelatin. Swinborne’s, however, carried on publishing the 1847 guarantee of purity,and promoting their gelatin ‘isinglass’. Effective legislation to counteract such substitution was some years away from enactment.

In her Book of Household Management of 1861, Mrs Beeton continued to give directions for making calf’s foot and cow-heel jellies, the latter requiring an eight-hour boil and at least forty-five minutes to clarify. Her recipe for isinglass or gelatin jellies still required their stocks to be boiled, have the scum removed and then be filtered through a jelly-bag, since most still varied so much in quality and strength:24

The best isinglass is brought from Russia, some of an inferior kind is brought from North and South America and the East Indies; the several varieties may be had from the wholesale dealers in isinglass in London. In choosing isinglass for domestic use, select that which is whitest, has no unpleasant odour, and which dissolves most readily in water … If the isinglass is adulterated with gelatin … in boiling water the gelatine will not so completely dissolve as the isinglass; in cold water it becomes clear and jelly-like, and in vinegar it will harden.

Such problems could be avoided by buying either a pure, reliable brand, or a sealed bottle of ready-made and flavoured jelly. The latter had only to be uncorked, stood in a pan of hot water until completely dissolved, and poured into a freshly-rinsed mould.

From this period many companies made gelatins for domestic use, some of them being closely linked to the leather industry, the by-products of which provided the necessary raw ingredients. In Leeds, the centre of the British leather trade, William Oldroyd & Sons made the ‘Finest Powdered Calf Gelatine, Quality Unequalled’ at their massive Scott Hall Mills which they depicted in the frontispiece of their promotional recipe booklet.25 Such products were now in widespread use, even though:26

It {was}within the memory of many persons that jelly was at one time only to be made from Calf ’s Feet by a slow, difficult, and expensive process. There is indeed a story told of the wife of a lawyer early in the {nineteenth}century having appropriated some valuable parchment deeds to make jelly when she could not procure Calf ’s Feet. But the secret that it could be so made was carefully guarded by the possessors of it.

The first company to promote the use of skin-based gelatins on a large scale was G. Nelson, Dale & Co. of Emscote Mills in Warwick. From 1881 it published a 124-page red cloth-covered hardback recipe book entitled Nelson’s Home Comforts containing recipes for its products, as well as pages of advertisements for its:

BOTTLED CONCENTRATED JELLIES

Invaluable to Invalids, Made in the following flavours; Calf’s Foot, Lemon, Sherry, Port, Orange and Cherry.

Patent Opaque Gelatine … sold in packets from 6d to 7/6d’

Powdered Gelatine … dissolves readily in boiling water … 1 lb. tins 3/3, ½ lb. 1/9, ¼ lb. 1 / -

Leaf Gelatine, IN VARIOUS QUALITIES. For all who have been in the habit of using Foreign Leaf Gelatines this will be found in all respects superior and of more uniform quality and strength. In 1 lb. and ½ lb. Packets.

Patent Refined Isinglass. Sold in 1 0z packets price 1 / -

Patent Isinglass. Sold in 1oz packets. Price 8d.

FAMILY JELLY Box. Contains sufficient materials for making 12 Quarts of jelly. Price 7s. 6d. each

These give a good idea of the range of prepared gelatins available throughout the Victorian and Edwardian periods. In addition, flavoured packet jellies were being produced by a number of major companies which had now developed many other new and relatively instant foodstuffs. These were to meet the demands of hard-pressed housewives who, through the diverse effects of industrialization, frequently lacked the time, money and domestic skills required to make dishes in the traditional way. Bottled sauces, gravy brownings, custard and blancmange powders all helped, as did pre-flavoured and sweetened packet jellies. Many were manufactured by firms which became household names from the late Victorian period, through to the present time. They included Alfred Bird & Sons, Chivers, William P. Hartley, Pearce, Duff, Rowntree and W. Symington, among others. Slabs of concentrated jelly which had only to be dissolved in hot water before moulding had been introduced by the 1920s. In 1932 Rowntrees moulded them into cubes. Other makers followed their lead, jelly cubes rapidly becoming the standard form in which prepared jellies were sold to the public throughout the twentieth century.

Given all the technical advances of the last two hundred years, it might be thought that nothing could be easier than to buy a packet jelly, dissolve it in water, pour it into a mould, leave it to set, and then simply turn it out. However, those who attempt to do so are almost certain to face failure and disappointment. The main problem is that most cube jellies made up with the specified quantity of liquid are far too weak to stand up. If made with half the specified amount of liquid, they might just stand up at room temperature, but then have flavours which are unpleasantly concentrated. The only solution is to dissolve additional gelatin in a little of the cold liquid before making up the jelly cubes with the remaining hot liquid.

TO MAKE A MOULDED JELLY FROM CUBES

1 pack jelly cubes1 pt / 600 ml liquid1–3 tsp / 2–4 leaves gelatin

Sprinkle then stir the gelatin (or cut the leaves into pieces) into 5 tbs of the liquid in a glass or clear plastic measuring jug, and leave to soak for 10 minutes. Stir to break up any lumps, add the cubes and half the remaining liquid and microwave for some 2 minutes, or gently heat in a pan, until completely dissolved. On no account must the liquid boil. Stir in the remaining liquid thoroughly, then set aside until cool, but not set, and pour into a prepared mould.

TO MAKE A MOULDED JELLY FROM GELATIN

Follow the recipe above, using 5 level tsp gelatin or 8 leaves of gelatin for each 1 pt/600 ml of liquid.

Many historic recipes give the quantity of gelatin in ounces. For these 1 oz/25 g represents 10 level tsp, or 15 standard 4½ x 3 in./11 x 7.5 cm leaves, both sufficient to set 2 pt/1.2 l of jelly suitable for moulding.

N.B. There is no such thing as a correct amount of gelatin to liquid. The main considerations to be made include:

Serving temperature. Jellies to be served in a warm room or on a hot summer’s day will require more gelatin. Similarly if they are to be served chilled, directly out of a refrigerator, less will be needed.

Size. Larger jellies need proportionately more gelatin.

Shape. Packet jellies will set in a dish, bowl or glasses without any additional gelatin. A greater quantity will be required if they are to be turned out as shallow mounds, but much more if from an almost vertical-sided mould.

Ingredients. Jellies including a large proportion of fruit purée or similar thickening additives will require less gelatin. Those including alcohol will require more.

If preparing jellies for a particular occasion it is always best to make one as a sample beforehand, and adjust the recipe accordingly.