CHAPTER 5

JELLIES, MILK PUDDINGS & ICES

The pleasure of deception

Jellies are delicately set liquids, forced into a shape because they are otherwise shapeless. They can be beautifully transparent, or mystically opaque. They can be created in one or many colours, look dramatically majestic, entertainingly funny or romantic. Jellies can be embedded with, and display, fresh, preserved or candied fruits, or even a whole fish for theatrical effect. Flavour is entirely up to the creator and can be used to mislead the receiver. The card of deception has been played well, with cooks making jellies look like castles, scallops, or even bacon and eggs. And just like early puddings, jellies started as savoury dishes.

In medieval times, jellies were only the privilege of kings, queens and nobles because they demanded great skill and time. They were called ‘gelé’, or ‘gelee’ in Middle English and usually served with the ‘pottage course’. Pigs’ ears or feet, and later calves’ feet, were used as a gelling agent. On the many fish days when the eating of meat was prohibited by the church, certain fish parts such as skin and bones were utilised. A strong fish stock was used to stew eels, plaice, stockfish and cod, which would be cooked until gelatinous. The stock, either from fish or meat, was then clarified using a woollen, probably flannel, jelly bag or ‘jelly-poke’. The Durham Manorial Accounts (edited by J.T. Fowler, 1898) mention a jelly bag like this in 1516–17.

These earliest medieval jellies, however, did not have the ability to stand upright or be moulded into a shape, nice and wobbly, as we know them today. They were more like stews, or brawns when more set. By the fifteenth century jellies were made into shapes and a spectacular specimen was made for the installation feast of the Bishop Clifford in 1407, as reported in A Noble Boke off Cookry (ed. A. Napier, 1882). It featured a jelly-filled castle in the midst of a custard moat with a demon and a priest on it. Together with the sugar ‘subtleties’ made to look like temples and castles, these feasting tables must have been a testament to great splendour.

Clear jelly was also used to encase vegetables, meat and fish. I believe this is where the aspics of the eighteenth century had their beginning. Another type of jelly was made with almond milk, sweeteners and flavourings such as rosewater. These opaque jellies were called ‘leach’ or ‘leche’ and made to slice into shapes to create a design. Gervase Markham, in The English Huswife (1596), instructs us to cut the ‘white leach’ in squares and lay gold upon them. A gilded leach like this was also served at Henry VIII’s Garter feast at Windsor in 1520, as reported by Elias Ashmole in Institution, Laws, and Ceremonies of the Order of the Garter (1672).

Recipes for ‘leach’ can, however, be found earlier. In fourteenth century manuscripts they still contained meat. The Forme of Cury (edited by Samuel Pegge, c. 1390) gives a recipe for ‘Leche Lumbard’: though not resembling a jelly at all, this dish is a meat loaf made to look like peas in a pod and served with a spiced raisin and almond milk sauce. Thomas Awkbarow’s fifteenth century manuscript has a ‘Leche Lumbard’ that fits the name ‘leach’ better. The author instructs the cook to create layers of different-coloured mousses made of minced chicken or pork and almonds, mixed with eggs and white wine. A leach jelly like this would later be known as a ‘ribbon jelly’.

The invention of the gelling agent ‘isinglass’ in Russia is where we can place the birth of jelly as we know it today. Isinglass is derived from the swimming bladder of the sturgeon and was extremely expensive. By 1590 it was commonly used in elite kitchens; a contemporary recipe treats it as if it was common knowledge and doesn’t include instructions. With the usage of isinglass it became possible to shape jellies using more elaborate moulds. The term jelly was now mostly used for sweet concoctions, although jellies incorporating savoury Ingredients continued to exist. Sadly, no jelly moulds survive from the Tudor period, but we know they existed because contemporary writings describe moulded jellies. A Spanish priest named Francesco Chieregati was particularly impressed with the jellies served to him and his party at a great feast hosted by Henry VIII in 1517: ‘but the jellies, of some twenty sorts perhaps, surpassed everything; they were made in the shape of castles and animals of various descriptions, as beautiful as can be imagined’. Luckily we always have contemporary diarists, letter writers and book authors to thank for lifting the veil of the sometimes foggy history of feasting tables long gone.

Not only animal-derived setting agents were used. Starches and gums were also commonplace to set jellies, leaches, flummeries and blancmanges. Arrowroot, semolina, tapioca, sago, rice, cornflour (cornstarch), bran, crushed biscuits and even bread were among the starches used. Rice and later cornflour were the usual Ingredients for setting blancmange, while crushed bread and biscuits were often used for sickroom dishes.

Flummery was an opaque jelly made by steeping oats or bran in water overnight and then boiling the strained liquid with flavourings such as orange flower water or rosewater. The flummery was then transferred to a wooden or earthenware mould and left to set. Gervase Markham is one of the first to mention it in his 1615 book, The English Huswife: ‘From this small Oat-meale, by oft steeping it in water and clensing it, and then boyling it to a thicke and stiffe jelly, is made that excellent dish of meat which is so esteemed in the West parts of this Kingdome, which they call Wash-brew, and in Chesheire and Lankasheire they call it Flamerie or Flumerie.’ In Scotland and some northern regions of England this same dish was known as ‘sowens’.

By the mid-seventeenth century, isinglass, hartshorn and ivory were sometimes added to give a firmer set to enable shaping of the flummery into even more novelty shapes. Hartshorn, which were the antlers of a young male deer, and ivory – elephant tusks – were both scraped and the dust used to set jellies and flummeries. Hartshorn jellies were thought to be restorative and were often made for the sickroom but were also eaten as an aphrodisiac and to strengthen male potency!

Another method of jelly-making can be found in William Rabisha’s 1661 book, The Whole Body of Cookery Dissected, in which he gives instructions to create a tart of jelly and leach. He also provides a template in his book to create a pastry case that looks a lot like a stained-glass window. Templates for tarts and pies were often added to the books of that period and the century after.

Ribbon jellies, popular in the eighteenth century, are directly related to the medieval leach dish. They were either composed into chequered designs, as Charles Carter illustrates in The Complete Practical Cook in 1730, or made into layers in the dainty jelly glasses of the period. Shops were founded where people could order ready-made jellies and ice creams for their special occasion.

Jellies made into astronomical subjects or temples, as well as jellies made to look like something they were not, were very popular in Georgian England. The art of deception and imitation continues to impress dinner guests centuries after the medieval cockatrice and other fantastical creations. Mrs Raffald shares recipes in her book (The Experienced English Housekeeper, 1782) for flummery made to look like playing cards, a hen’s nest with flummery eggs, fish ponds and an impressive Solomon’s temple. As in the early days, counterfeit eggs were made to be eaten on fish days, although in Georgian times they were made just for the pleasure of dramatic effect.

During the nineteenth century, jellies were still reserved for the wealthiest households. The upper class would more often buy great splendid jellies for dinner parties and balls from the same shops as they would buy ice-cream puddings and ornamental cakes. Jelly moulds, previously produced in earthenware, were now also manufactured in tin-lined copper and tin and became much bigger than the ones produced in the eighteenth century. The moulds also became more elaborate in shape; or there were core moulds that were in the shape of an obelisk or pyramid in which an insert decorated with painted flowers or landscapes could be placed, which could be seen through the jelly to dazzle the guests. The higher the jelly, the better the wobble effect, which would always be entertaining at a dinner party.

Jellies remained labour-intensive and tedious to make from raw Ingredients. Mass-produced gelatine was the answer and was advertised from the 1840s onwards. Cookery books aimed at the lower and lower–middle classes start to give instructions including their usage too. From the moment Mrs Beeton published her writings in the 1860s, the use of prepared isinglass and gelatine had become common. She gives 26 recipes for jellies in her book, but notes that jellies made with homemade gelling agents were far more delicate and much better in flavour than the prepared alternative, which often tasted like glue.

Eliza Acton, known and loved for hanging on to the days of splendour in the kitchen, still gives several recipes for jelly in her book ( Modern Cookery for Private Families, 1845) that are worthy of any nobleman’s table. Her instructions are always clear and her recipes illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings of different moulds. One particularly interesting jelly is her basket with oranges filled with jelly, garnished with aromatic myrtle leaves. The jellies were often eaten with savoy cakes or sponge cakes.

Twentieth century jellies still took on fine shapes and the nineteenth century creamware moulds remained in production. Some are still made today, although on a smaller scale. It is true that after the two world wars, jellies and other foods were massively adulterated with chemical flavourings and stabilisers; powdered mixes were sold and in recent decades a children’s party wouldn’t be complete without frightfully coloured store-bought jellies. However, the classic jelly has seen a revival, with chefs using tiny jellies as flavour sensations in their dishes.

Much as you could order a novelty jelly from a jelly shop in the eighteenth century, today a company is again offering bespoke theatrical jellies for special occasions, movies and events. As with so many things, the circle is complete: we’ve gone from chemical-looking jellies in supermarkets back to elaborate and elegant looking temples, castles and domes made with quality products. Are you a brave enough cook to try your hand at unmoulding a jelly?

Blancmange

Mentioned in the prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1475), this dish – the name of which means ‘white food’ – is one of the most international early dishes of European cuisine. From the Middle Ages onwards the name of this dish in its various forms – blanc mange, blanc manger, blamange, manjar branco, biancomangiare – can be found in most European cookery books.

Blancmange was a dish for the elite in the Middle Ages; its Ingredients of rice, almonds, flavourings such as saffron and garnishes such as pomegranate were exotic and luxurious and only available to those with deep pockets. By the fifteenth century, however, many of these exotic goods, including rice, were being cultivated in Europe, making them more widely available – though still only among the higher tiers of society – rather than exclusively for the king’s table.

It is believed by many food historians that the earliest recipe for blancmange dates back to the twelfth century. The first written recipe for it was found in a Danish cookbook possibly written by Henrik Harpestræng ( Libellus De Arte Coquinaria), who died in 1244. A recipe for blancmange also features in one manuscript version of The Forme of Cury and in the edited version by Samuel Pegge (1390), there were two. By 1395, two recipes for blancmange can be found in the Viandier manuscripts, the first French cookbook: one is a dish for the sick, the other is a multicoloured dish, which is at odds with the name’s literal meaning. Historian Terrence Scully ( The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages, 1995) believes the name might have meant ‘bland food’ instead of ‘white food’, which could also explain why the dish often pops up in the chapters for food for the sick. Scully also believes that the humoral properties of the main Ingredients – chicken, capon or fish, almonds and rice – were thought by medieval physicians to be beneficial to health.

The different blancmange recipes of the Middle Ages feature the basic dish made with minced chicken or capon meat, and the Lenten blancmange which substitutes white fish for the meat. Then there was the fancy decorative blancmange, made in different colours and garnished with pomegranate seeds or flowers to become a decoration for the table.

A Catalan-style blancmange is recorded in 1475 in Bartolomeo Platina’s De Honesta Voluptate, which is considered the first printed cookbook. However, for the recipe to be recorded in a book means that it most probably had been around for years before. This Catalan version was made with rice rather than rice flour, which made it more of a porridge-like pudding, similar to a rice pudding perhaps. Blancmange was a very popular dish in Italy and featured on a lot of feast menus.

Blancmange tarts

In seventeenth century recipes, cooks start using egg whites and breadcrumbs, but the traditional recipes appear alongside them. Robert May, in 1660 ( The Accomplisht Cook), even suggests to pour the blancmange mixture into pastry casings so they look like tarts. He gives two templates for the design.

The end of the original

From the eighteenth century, the dish was usually set with hartshorn or isinglass, from the bladder of a sturgeon, instead of using rice or rice flour. This method was also used for making flummery and so blancmange and flummery became more or less the same dish. The puddings were now being moulded into shapes thanks to the increasing availability of ceramic moulds that were being produced by English potteries. Previously they had more often been served in shallow dishes, or turned out of those dishes onto a plate and decorated.

A blancmange that was made by adding egg yolks to the mixture, along with white wine and the juice of seville oranges, appeared in an eighteenth century cookery book. The dish was called a ‘jaune mange’ (yellow food). Despite its French name, it hasn’t been spotted in French recipe collections and I know food historian Ivan Day has been looking for one for some time now. In the nineteenth century the blancmange was made with cornflour and the brand Brown & Polson created moulds with their ‘Corn Flour Blanc-Mange’ recipe printed on them.

School dinners

The latest version of the blancmange is the sweet dish that evolved in the nineteenth century. From this time, cornflour (cornstarch) or gelatine was added and, as food manufacturing progressed, blancmange powder was born. Artificial colouring and flavours made it so that the dish that once graced the tables of kings and queens became the muted-coloured dessert that began to be disliked for its stodgy texture and often bland flavour. In the 1950s it was served at the conclusion of the school dinner and it is engraved on many people’s memories with such horror that most of them banished it from their lives forever. Little did these children know that this hated dish used to be something quite dainty and luxurious and the privilege of kings and queens.

Blancmange made with meat or fish is no longer eaten in Europe; however, a sweet blancmange made from chicken breast is very popular in Turkey. They call it ‘tavuk göğsü’; the name literally means ‘chicken breast’ and some claims are made that it used to be served to the sultans of the Ottoman Empire in the Topkapi Palace.

What makes blancmange a dish worth recreating for the table today is that it is one of the few medieval dishes that have survived through the ages.