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Jelly in Orange-Skins
Take four large sound oranges. Cut out a round about an inch in diameter from the stalk end, and scoop out the contents of the orange very thoroughly with a tea-spoon. Throw the skins into cold water for two or three hours, to harden them, and meanwhile make the juice as clear as possible by straining it through a jelly-bag. Add an ounce of isinglass dissolved in as little water as possible, and a quarter of a pound of loaf sugar, and strain the jelly again until it is quite clear. Take out the skins, let them drain, and if inadvertently any holes have been made, fill them up with butter. Put the jelly into the orange-skins, and when they are quite cold, cut them into quarters with a sharp knife, pile them on a napkin, and garnish them prettily with bright green leaves. The appearance of the fruit is much improved if the oranges are filled with different-coloured jellies, but when this is done, one colour must become firm before the next is added. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A Victorian dessert that is mostly assembly: clarified orange jelly set inside the emptied peel, then cut into wedges so each slice looks like a segment of fruit. Two things decide whether it works — a genuinely firm set and skins with no holes in them.
- Isinglass to gelatineIsinglass is dried sturgeon swim bladder, sold in leaf or shred form and no longer a kitchen staple. Substitute powdered or leaf gelatine, reckoning roughly 14 g (two standard sachets, or about 7 leaves) per 500 ml of liquid for a jelly firm enough to cut and stand up in wedges.
- The juice quantity is not givenFour oranges yield only around 250–300 ml of juice, which will not refill four skins; the sugar and the water the isinglass is dissolved in add a little more, but not enough. Plan on buying extra oranges for juicing, or the shells will be half empty, and adjust the gelatine to the volume you actually end up with.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone; a quarter pound is 115 g of ordinary granulated or caster sugar. With modern sweet dessert oranges you may want less — taste the sweetened juice before setting it.
- Clearing the jellyA jelly-bag is a fine cloth cone; a double layer of muslin in a sieve does the same work. Let it drip without squeezing, or the jelly clouds. Strain the juice before the gelatine goes in as well as after.
- Soaking the skinsThe cold-water soak firms the peel so it holds a shape and cuts cleanly. Two to three hours is not padding; skins used straight after scooping slump and tear.
- Filling holes with butterFirm cold butter pressed into a puncture from the inside sets hard in the fridge and stops leaks. Check each shell against a light before filling, and stand the shells upright in a muffin tin or in crumpled foil so they cannot tip.
- Layered coloursEach layer must be fully set — an hour or more in the refrigerator — before the next is poured, and the jelly being poured should be barely lukewarm. Hot jelly melts a channel through the layer beneath and the colours bleed.
- Cutting and servingChill overnight, then cut with a thin sharp knife wiped between cuts, quartering the whole orange lengthways. Four oranges cut into quarters give sixteen pieces, which matches the original's six to eight servings.
Cut jellies like this belong to the late-Victorian dessert table, where the point of a sweet was as much display as flavour, and clarity was the mark of a good cook: a jelly you could read print through proved the juice had been properly strained and the setting agent properly handled. Isinglass, the fish-derived gelling agent called for here, was the fashionable choice through most of the nineteenth century — more reliable than the calf's-foot stock earlier cooks boiled down themselves — and it is generally said to have been displaced over time by commercial powdered gelatine, though such gelatine was already being sold in Britain by the mid-nineteenth century. That oranges appear as a serving vessel says something about their price by the time Cassell's was compiled: Mediterranean fruit is often said to have arrived in Britain by steamer in quantity, and an orange had gone from a Christmas treat to something a household could hollow out, the juice going into the jelly itself.