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Cream, Orange
Soak the thin rind of three oranges in a pint of milk till the flavour is extracted. Strain the milk, and boil it, then pour it boiling hot upon half an ounce of gelatine which has been soaked in cold water for an hour. Stir it until dissolved, sweeten it agreeably and keep stirring occasionally till cool, to prevent a scum forming. Pour the cream into a damp mould and let it remain till set. Turn out and serve. Cut the soaked rind into thin strips. Boil these in syrup to which the orange juice has been added, and pour both rind and syrup over the cream when it is turned out.
A moulded gelatine dessert of the plainest Victorian type, despite the name it contains no cream at all. The whole flavour rests on the orange rind infusion, so that step is where the attention goes.
- No cream in the cream"Cream" here means a smooth moulded sweet set with gelatine, not dairy cream. If you want a richer set, replacing a third of the milk with single cream is in keeping with the period, though it is not what is written.
- Pare the rind thinTake only the coloured zest with a peeler or sharp knife; any white pith turns the infusion bitter over a long soak. Three oranges' worth of rind to a pint of milk is a strong flavouring and it should be.
- InfusingA cold soak works but is slow. Warming the milk to just below a simmer with the rind, then leaving it covered off the heat for 30 to 40 minutes, extracts the oils faster without cooking the milk.
- Gelatine quantityHalf an ounce is about 14 g to an Imperial pint, roughly 570 ml. That is a firm set intended to stand up when turned out of a mould; if you want a softer, spoonable texture use closer to 9 or 10 g.
- Leaf versus powderPowdered gelatine is bloomed in a little cold water then dissolved in the hot milk, as written. Leaf gelatine should be soaked in plenty of cold water, squeezed out hard, and stirred into the hot milk. Do not boil the milk again once the gelatine is in.
- "Sweeten it agreeably"About 2 to 3 oz (60-85 g) of caster sugar to the pint suits most palates, dissolved in the hot milk. Taste it warm and expect it to read slightly sweeter than it will when cold.
- The damp mouldRinsing the mould with cold water and not drying it lets the set cream release cleanly, which matters more than oiling. To turn out, dip the mould in hot water for three or four seconds only, then invert onto a wet plate so the cream can be slid into position.
- The candied rind and syrupSimmer the soaked strips in a syrup of equal sugar and water until translucent; this may take longer than a few minutes. The recipe adds the orange juice to the syrup before boiling, though adding it off the heat instead will preserve more of the fresh flavour. Cool the syrup before pouring, or it will melt the surface of the cream.
- YieldA pint mould serves four generously or six modestly. Allow at least four hours in the refrigerator to set, and overnight is safer.
Moulded sweets set with gelatine ran right through nineteenth-century English cookery, and by the time Cassell's dictionary appeared they had become genuinely domestic rather than grand. Earlier cooks had to make their own jelly by boiling calves' feet or isinglass for hours, a process that dictated the shape of a whole day's kitchen work; commercially prepared gelatine, increasingly available in sheet form by the second half of the century, reduced it to an ounce packet and an hour's soaking. That change is why a book like this one can offer variations on the same formula under "Cream" - each one milk, sugar, flavouring and gelatine in a shaped mould. The elaborate turned-out shape did the work that the ingredients did not, and the candied rind and syrup poured over at the end are the only real flourish the recipe allows itself.