‘Razina Rosewater Jelly’ – for the distinguished gourmand looking to satisfy a sweet tooth. This food item doesn’t actually exist in-game. It’s one of the few that were conceptualized, but didn’t make it in Dishonored 2. It’s a shame, because it looks very pretty, and would be a sight for sore eyes after all those dirty cans of jellied eels and whale meat.

Dishonored has a surprisingly large amount of food lore. Which I’m very happy about. The player character can heal by vacuuming up the many foods left lying in the dirty streets, Amongst these foods include; loose fruit, canned seafood, roast rats, and bottles of various alcohols. Characters talk about regional cuisine, and express their feelings about various dishes. 

But for my ‘video game cooking’ series, it’s this jarred jelly that caught my eye. Other items seemed pretty self-explanatory, like plain flatbreads and brined fish. Not only that, but all named foods are packaged in setting-appropriate cans and tins and bottles, which implores me to replicate the packaging as well as the food. Finding a plague-tinted can for jellied eels is harder than a simple mason jar for this rosewater jelly.

Thing is – the name ‘rosewater jelly’ is also self-explanatory. For those familiar with jelly recipes, all you need is gelatin and flavoring to make a jiggly desert. Rosewater is simply water seeped with rose petals in a particular process, creating a solution with an aromatic taste. Rosewater has a huge food presence throughout West Asian history. The current western world has only recently caught onto the rosewater trend.

So if I was particularly blasé, I’d tell you to get flavorless gelatin powder, a bottle of rosewater, and mix it all together with water and sugar and pink food coloring. Boom – rosewater jelly.

But we’re here to have fun, and that means making a complicated jelly desert within a vintage-packaged mason jar! So for flavoring, we’re getting our grocery store rosewater and flavorless gelatin. We’re also going to add special ingredients inspired by Dishonored’s setting. 

Dunwall’s an obvious British Isles/Germany dupe, with its Gothic/Victorian/Art Nouveau clothing and architecture, and the name; “dun” being Old English. Serkonos (a neighboring country and the setting of Dishonored 2), on the other hand, is some weird amalgamate of south Europe (Italy, Greece, Portugal) and middle America (Cuba, the Caribbean). 

(In Dishonored 1, the mission ‘Lady Boyle’s Last Party’ features a large dinner table, piled high with food. There’s a huge fish, a boar, and various cheeses, fruits, tarts, and giant jellies.)

Some foods within the games are specifically exported from select countries. There’s the Serkonan Blood Sausage, the Tyvian Potted Whale Meat, Morley Jellied Ox Tongue, and the Pratchett branded Jellies Eels that come from Gristol’s Dunwall itself. Characters talk about how Serkonan food is too spicy, Gristol’s food being gross, and Tyvian cuisine being ornate. We can get a general idea of what each foods are supposed to emulate.

It’s not said where Razina Rosewater Jelly originated. We have four regions to chose from (Gristol, Serkonos, Tyvia, and Morley), so we gotta narrow down the possibilities. Who would export rosewater-flavored jelly deserts in pretty jars?

I think Gristol is out. Their favorite foods include fish, meat pies, and beer, which screams United Kingdom and there’s no precedent for rosewater anything throughout Great Britain history. Tyvia gets closer, being a Russian approximate and boasting fancy wines. Morley has almost no in-game lore aside from being cold and full of tall blonde people, and Serkonos probably sits too far West for our Persian-based rosewater ingredient.

The name ‘Razina’ also doesn’t provide a solid answer. Googling results in sources from Lithuania, Croatia, and a girl’s name from the Urdu dialect of Hindi – Urdu being a dialect with strong Persian influences. Well, we knew that from the rosewater thing.

(Since the jar doesn’t come with a spoon, it might not be like a pudding cup that you, like, can eat on the go. Instead, its a food you buy then serve later – like fruit jam.)

So if no in-game region emulates a West Asian influence, then Tyvia is the closest we get for implied influence – Tyvia (probably) takes its inspiration from real-life Russia, so we can extend its reach down to Kazakhstan, Georgia, Turkey, and perhaps even Iran. All we know is; Tyvia’s art is ornate, they’re known for good food, and it’s a cold country. It fits.

Therefore, our grocery list is gonna be including ingredients from these real-life cultures, to make our Razina Rosewater Jelly. 

Quick gelatin history; the squishy, translucent foodstuff can originate from many sources, such as kelp, meat, and bones. It’s hard to isolate the connective goop into any substantial amount of gelatin to craft into a dish, making it an ingredient mostly upon the tables of the privileged. Dishonored can be said to take place during an industrial revolution, sharing the real-life production history of Jell-O’s inception by using pressure cooking as a glue manufacturing byproduct. So we can claim that our Razina Rosewater Jelly is being mass-produced as a more affordable luxury. 

Me being an overachieving geek, I first considered buying beef bones and boiling it down to gelatin myself, to really make this recipe authentic. But after some research, I decided it would be way too difficult – not only does it take several days of complicated pre-pressure-cooker pressure cooking, but it will taste meaty and gross and salty. Powdered gelatin it is.

For our other ingredients, we’re going to get; red food coloring, saffron, egg whites, vanilla, and vodka. Because we’re not just gonna make jelly in a jar, that’s boring. We’re making jelly mousse in a jar. That’s more fancy and exciting, and fitting of its decadence.

Our ingredients are; 1 cup of rosewater, 2 tablespoons powder gelatin, 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 egg white, a splash of vodka, and red food coloring. Along with some spices to emulate its fancy ~imported~ taste, such as saffron, vanilla, and perhaps agave nectar or mahlab.

To begin, you’ll mix together the rosewater and sugar with a small drop of red food coloring to make a pink, sugary solution. And this is also where I added a sprinkling of the spices and a drop of the vanilla. You can add more flavors to this base, such as blended fruit. The little hit of vodka is our fancy ‘Tyvian’ influence. I guess?

Then, to the watery mix you’ll add your gelatin and mix thoroughly.

Setting that aside, we’ll separate an egg to get our egg white. Taking a whisk, you’ll whip the egg whites until its completely frothy with stiff peaks. It’s not as hard as it sounds, and it’ll take you perhaps three minutes at most.

Finally, you’re going to add the watery mix to your frothy egg whites, mixing until the mixture becomes a soft mousse texture. It’s not gonna be a true mousse, its too watery for that. But the formula will have some thickness to it.

Pouring it into your jar, you’ll place that into the fridge to become a mousse jelly within one-three hours (depending on your serving sizes). 

And that’s it! Once the jelly is set, you can pull out your jar and marvel at your Dishonored 2 desert. So delicious and sweet, it was too pure for the actual game.