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Lime Jelly
Take half a pint of lime-juice, half a pint of water, three-quarters of an ounce of sheet gelatine, and three ounces of sugar. Put these ingredients over the fire until the gelatine is quite dissolved, then strain through a jelly-bag, and finish off as for ordinary jelly.
A plain acid jelly of the sort Cassell's expects a cook to turn out of a mould. The proportions are sound, but sheet gelatine and imperial pints both need translating.
- The measuresHalf a pint imperial is 10 fl oz, so the recipe makes a pint (20 fl oz, about 2.5 US cups) of jelly. That is roughly 300 ml lime juice — 10 to 14 limes — and 300 ml water. Three ounces of sugar is about 85 g.
- Sheet gelatine then and nowThree-quarters of an ounce is 21 g, a high dose for a pint because acid weakens gelatine's set. Modern leaf gelatine is sold by bloom strength; platinum-grade sheets weigh only about 1.7 g each, so 21 g is around 12 sheets. Powdered gelatine substitutes gram for gram: three 7 g envelopes.
- Soak before heatingThe original assumes you know to soften sheets in cold water first, then squeeze them out. Dropped dry into hot acid juice they clump and never fully dissolve.
- Heat, do not boil"Over the fire until the gelatine is quite dissolved" means warm enough to melt — about 140F is plenty. Boiling lime juice with gelatine drives off the fresh aroma and can degrade the set.
- Finishing off as for ordinary jellyThe phrase most likely covers the usual clarifying-and-moulding routine: egg white (and crushed shell) whisked in, brought gently to the point of simmering so the raft forms, then poured through a scalded jelly bag without squeezing, the first cloudy runnings returned to the bag. Note that this recipe has already called for a jelly-bag, so the instruction may refer only to moulding and setting. A double layer of muslin in a sieve does the same job as the bag.
- SweetnessThree ounces of sugar against half a pint of lime juice is sharp by modern taste — closer to a palate-cleanser than a dessert. Up to 5 oz brings it into line with a commercial fruit jelly without troubling the set.
- Setting and yieldPour into a rinsed mould of a pint and a quarter or so (the sugar adds to the 20 fl oz of liquid) and chill at least 4 hours, or overnight for clean unmoulding. Serves four small portions; dip the mould in warm water for a few seconds to turn out.
Lime juice earned its place in a late-Victorian British kitchen by way of the sea. Merchant and naval ships carried it as an antiscorbutic under the Merchant Shipping Act of 1867, and West Indian limes — Montserrat in particular — were being pressed and shipped to Britain in quantity, which is why bottled lime juice was an inexpensive larder staple. Cassell's places this among its jellies at a moment when sheet gelatine was increasingly used alongside the older, laborious calf's-foot stock: a jelly that once meant a day of boiling and skimming bones could now be made in an hour, and clear acid jellies like this one were valued precisely because they showed off that transparency at table. The instruction to "finish off as for ordinary jelly" is the tell — the book assumes the reader already has the clarifying and moulding routine by heart.