Solid Sauces: Gelatin Jellies and Carbohydrate Jellies

When a meat or fish stock is allowed to cool to room temperature, it may set into a fragile solid, or gel. This behavior can be undesirable, for example when it causes some sauce to congeal on the plate. But cooks also exploit it to make delightful jellies, a sort of solid sauce. A gel forms when the gelatin concentration is sufficiently high, around 1% or more of the stock’s total weight. At these concentrations, there are enough gelatin molecules in the stock that their long chains can overlap with each other to form a continuous network throughout the stock. As the hot stock cools down to the melting temperature of gelatin, around 100°F/40°C, the extended gelatin chains begin to assume the coiled shape that they had in the original triple helix of the collagen fibers. And when coils on different molecules approach each other, they nest closely alongside each other and bond to form new double and triple helixes. These reassembled collagen junctions give some rigidity to the network of gelatin molecules, and they and the water molecules they surround can no longer flow freely: so the liquid turns into a solid. A 1% gelatin gel is fragile and quivery and breaks easily when handled; the more familiar and robust dessert jellies made with commercial gelatin are usually 3% gelatin or more. The higher the proportion of gelatin, the more firm and rubbery the gel is.