Question for chefs
17 August 2005, 11:43 AM
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Question for chefs
Recipe asks for 4 sheets of leaf gelatine which we haven't got. What is equivalent in powdered gelatine please? TIA, david
17 August 2005, 11:52 AM
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Unravel the mysteries of gelatine and your reward will be delicate, spectacular dishes.
In her classic book Fruit, Jane Grigson describes a delightful scene of a group of adolescent girls looking elegant in long, white muslin dresses with apple-green sashes. This image introduces a recipe for a layered bavarian cream, with the cool apple-green stripes made from greengage plums, the white from yoghurt.
A bavarian cream, or bavarois, is in many ways the quintessential French dessert. It can be made with pure fruit or cream infused with herbs or spices. It can be combined with other layers or hidden inside a fruit jelly, or it can be poured on to a liqueur-soaked sponge cake. Unlike a mousse, its texture should be smooth and velvety, not spongy or fluffy. Usually, it is made from a stirred classic custard. Usually, but not always, it is sweet. The one ingredient it must have is gelatine.
Gelatine and its Asian cousin, agar-agar, are much in the spotlight these days, thanks to the work of Ferran Adria and other Spanish chefs and their followers. But long before they started their experiments, a knowledge of the properties of gelatine was required in the average kitchen.
We knew that gelatine powder or sheets needed to be softened so they could swell before being combined with liquid.
We knew, or thought we knew, that an equivalent weight of leaf gelatine and powdered gelatine would set the same amount of liquid to the same degree of firmness.
But things have changed. Last year, the company that distributes Dr Oetker leaf gelatine - the familiar bright-blue envelope containing six sheets (10g) - stopped exporting to Australia, citing difficulties in complying with our new labelling laws.
The largest manufacturer of gelatine in the world is a German company called Gelita, which has supplied professional pastrycooks here for some time. It makes gelatine sheets in several grades, variously labelled Titanium, Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum.
Powdered gelatine is in every supermarket, usually with gelling strength indicated.
Leaf gelatine tends to be stocked by specialist food and kitchen supply shops, usually with no information whatsoever on the packets.
This is where the plot thickens (excuse the pun!) and we must get our heads around the concept of "bloom". Bloom is the measure of the gelling power of gelatine. The weight of the sheet is NOT the measure of its gelling power. Just because one leaf weighs 5g and another weighs 1.6g, one cannot assume that the heavier sheet will set the same amount of liquid three times more solidly than the lighter leaf.
I have scrutinised the Gelita website.
I have twice emailed the company in Germany. I have spoken to three distributors of specific grades of leaf gelatine in Australia. I have spoken to the distributors of Dr Oetker in Canada.
The reality seem to be that different firms import different grades, sometimes because their clients are used to a particular kind, sometimes to simplify distribution, or for less discernible reasons. All acknowledge that there is no central marketing body, no information to help the layman and no standard conversion between different grades of leaf gelatine or between leaf gelatine and powder. (Manufacturers of leaf gelatine are, of course, not that interested in advising customers how to convert recipes that use leaf gelatine to powdered gelatine.)
One person I consulted told me she had always used one heaped half-teaspoon per leaf.
This works well if using a Dr Oetker sheet, or a Gelita Gold sheet, but does not work if using Titanium. Silver, meanwhile, sets to the same strength as Titanium, even though both the weight of the sheet and the bloom values are different.
Confused? Of course you are! The confusion is an unacknowledged nightmare for food writers and their readers.
In desperation, I gathered single sheets of Titanium, Silver and Gold, plus a single sheet from rival firm Alba Gold, and experimented.
A single sheet of Gelita, either Titanium (5 g) or Silver (2.5 g) set one cup of water to a firm gel, whereas it takes three leaves of Gelita Gold to achieve the same result.
All this variation makes nonsense of any recipe that tells you to take one leaf of gelatine without specifying the grade.
From an earlier reply from Germany, I was given the mind-bending formula of how to convert from one bloom to another. Quite simple really ...
Weight (Bloom 2) = weight (Bloom 1) x square root (Bloom1/Bloom2).
Reading this formula brought back horrible memories of school days (I failed year 10 mathematics). When I stopped sweating, I became angry.
How dare this company provide no accessible back-up! And how can retailers sell gelatine leaves in repackaged cellophane envelopes with absolutely no information regarding strength or setting ability?
I now understand that the reason all food writers (including me) were able to tell readers to substitute the same weight of unflavoured gelatine powder for gelatine leaves (and have the recipes succeed) was because the universally available Dr Oetker sheets and gelatine powder had the same bloom strength. They could be successfully substituted for each other by weight.
I have decided that, in future, the only leaf gelatine I will refer to in any recipe I write will be either Dr Oetker (in case there is stock lurking about), Alba Gold or Gelita Gold. (It also may be helpful to know that one metric teaspoon of powdered gelatine weighs 3.3g, and it can be satisfactorily converted weight for weight for these grades only).
In her classic book Fruit, Jane Grigson describes a delightful scene of a group of adolescent girls looking elegant in long, white muslin dresses with apple-green sashes. This image introduces a recipe for a layered bavarian cream, with the cool apple-green stripes made from greengage plums, the white from yoghurt.
A bavarian cream, or bavarois, is in many ways the quintessential French dessert. It can be made with pure fruit or cream infused with herbs or spices. It can be combined with other layers or hidden inside a fruit jelly, or it can be poured on to a liqueur-soaked sponge cake. Unlike a mousse, its texture should be smooth and velvety, not spongy or fluffy. Usually, it is made from a stirred classic custard. Usually, but not always, it is sweet. The one ingredient it must have is gelatine.
Gelatine and its Asian cousin, agar-agar, are much in the spotlight these days, thanks to the work of Ferran Adria and other Spanish chefs and their followers. But long before they started their experiments, a knowledge of the properties of gelatine was required in the average kitchen.
We knew that gelatine powder or sheets needed to be softened so they could swell before being combined with liquid.
We knew, or thought we knew, that an equivalent weight of leaf gelatine and powdered gelatine would set the same amount of liquid to the same degree of firmness.
But things have changed. Last year, the company that distributes Dr Oetker leaf gelatine - the familiar bright-blue envelope containing six sheets (10g) - stopped exporting to Australia, citing difficulties in complying with our new labelling laws.
The largest manufacturer of gelatine in the world is a German company called Gelita, which has supplied professional pastrycooks here for some time. It makes gelatine sheets in several grades, variously labelled Titanium, Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum.
Powdered gelatine is in every supermarket, usually with gelling strength indicated.
Leaf gelatine tends to be stocked by specialist food and kitchen supply shops, usually with no information whatsoever on the packets.
This is where the plot thickens (excuse the pun!) and we must get our heads around the concept of "bloom". Bloom is the measure of the gelling power of gelatine. The weight of the sheet is NOT the measure of its gelling power. Just because one leaf weighs 5g and another weighs 1.6g, one cannot assume that the heavier sheet will set the same amount of liquid three times more solidly than the lighter leaf.
I have scrutinised the Gelita website.
I have twice emailed the company in Germany. I have spoken to three distributors of specific grades of leaf gelatine in Australia. I have spoken to the distributors of Dr Oetker in Canada.
The reality seem to be that different firms import different grades, sometimes because their clients are used to a particular kind, sometimes to simplify distribution, or for less discernible reasons. All acknowledge that there is no central marketing body, no information to help the layman and no standard conversion between different grades of leaf gelatine or between leaf gelatine and powder. (Manufacturers of leaf gelatine are, of course, not that interested in advising customers how to convert recipes that use leaf gelatine to powdered gelatine.)
One person I consulted told me she had always used one heaped half-teaspoon per leaf.
This works well if using a Dr Oetker sheet, or a Gelita Gold sheet, but does not work if using Titanium. Silver, meanwhile, sets to the same strength as Titanium, even though both the weight of the sheet and the bloom values are different.
Confused? Of course you are! The confusion is an unacknowledged nightmare for food writers and their readers.
In desperation, I gathered single sheets of Titanium, Silver and Gold, plus a single sheet from rival firm Alba Gold, and experimented.
A single sheet of Gelita, either Titanium (5 g) or Silver (2.5 g) set one cup of water to a firm gel, whereas it takes three leaves of Gelita Gold to achieve the same result.
All this variation makes nonsense of any recipe that tells you to take one leaf of gelatine without specifying the grade.
From an earlier reply from Germany, I was given the mind-bending formula of how to convert from one bloom to another. Quite simple really ...
Weight (Bloom 2) = weight (Bloom 1) x square root (Bloom1/Bloom2).
Reading this formula brought back horrible memories of school days (I failed year 10 mathematics). When I stopped sweating, I became angry.
How dare this company provide no accessible back-up! And how can retailers sell gelatine leaves in repackaged cellophane envelopes with absolutely no information regarding strength or setting ability?
I now understand that the reason all food writers (including me) were able to tell readers to substitute the same weight of unflavoured gelatine powder for gelatine leaves (and have the recipes succeed) was because the universally available Dr Oetker sheets and gelatine powder had the same bloom strength. They could be successfully substituted for each other by weight.
I have decided that, in future, the only leaf gelatine I will refer to in any recipe I write will be either Dr Oetker (in case there is stock lurking about), Alba Gold or Gelita Gold. (It also may be helpful to know that one metric teaspoon of powdered gelatine weighs 3.3g, and it can be satisfactorily converted weight for weight for these grades only).
Last edited by imlach; 17 August 2005 at 11:54 AM.
17 August 2005, 11:55 AM
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Poached Summer Berries with Sauternes Wine
by Paul Merrett
from Fresh Food
Serves 4
Preparation time over 2 hours
Cooking time 10 to 30 mins
Ingredients
Syrup
500g/1 lb 2oz caster sugar
250ml/9fl oz sweet white wine, such as Sauternes dessert wine
4 vanilla pods, split with seeds scraped out and reserved
1 star anise
2.5cm/1in cinnamon stick
225g/8oz raspberries
225g/8oz strawberries, hulled
225g/8oz redcurrants
Feuillantines
350g/12oz pack ready rolled puff pastry icing sugar, for dusting
Panna Cotta
4 gelatine leaves or 5 tbsp powdered
850ml/1 ½ pint double cream
300ml/½ pint milk
1 tbsp caster sugar
2 vanilla pods, scraped seeds
by Paul Merrett
from Fresh Food
Serves 4
Preparation time over 2 hours
Cooking time 10 to 30 mins
Ingredients
Syrup
500g/1 lb 2oz caster sugar
250ml/9fl oz sweet white wine, such as Sauternes dessert wine
4 vanilla pods, split with seeds scraped out and reserved
1 star anise
2.5cm/1in cinnamon stick
225g/8oz raspberries
225g/8oz strawberries, hulled
225g/8oz redcurrants
Feuillantines
350g/12oz pack ready rolled puff pastry icing sugar, for dusting
Panna Cotta
4 gelatine leaves or 5 tbsp powdered
850ml/1 ½ pint double cream
300ml/½ pint milk
1 tbsp caster sugar
2 vanilla pods, scraped seeds
17 August 2005, 12:15 PM
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Imlach - you have surpassed yourself. I shall print that off (check I have enough toner 
) and hand it to the boss with comment "That'll teach you". You see she thought SN was just about whiplash women!!
But hey thanks a million. And Luan.
David
) and hand it to the boss with comment "That'll teach you". You see she thought SN was just about whiplash women!!But hey thanks a million. And Luan.
David
17 August 2005, 05:08 PM
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Originally Posted by David Lock
Imlach - you have surpassed yourself. I shall print that off (check I have enough toner ) and hand it to the boss with comment "That'll teach you". You see she thought SN was just about whiplash women!!
But hey thanks a million. And Luan.
David
) and hand it to the boss with comment "That'll teach you". You see she thought SN was just about whiplash women!!But hey thanks a million. And Luan.
David
17 August 2005, 05:16 PM
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Originally Posted by Alas
I used to be a chef but every time I ran out of gelatin I just used my dogs slobbers(french mastiff). Tasty
Perhaps that's why you USED to be a chef
Imlach - I think that should be tsp and not tbsp in your recipe??
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