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Orange Fool
Strain the juice of three Seville oranges into a basin with three well-beaten eggs. Mix them thoroughly, grate half a small nutmeg over them, and add a pint of thick cream, flavoured and sweetened with sugar which has been rubbed upon lemon-rind. Put the mixture into a jug, place it in a pan of boiling water, and stir it over the fire until it begins to thicken. Serve it in a glass dish, with a little sifted sugar strewn over it. Time, a quarter of an hour to thicken the mixture. Probable cost, 2s. 4d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
This is a stirred custard rather than the crushed-fruit-and-cream fool most cooks expect, and its success hinges on heat control: bitter orange juice and eggs will curdle the instant the mixture approaches a simmer.
- Keep it below a simmerThe jug set in boiling water is a makeshift bain-marie, and its purpose is to keep the custard away from direct heat. Stir constantly and pull it off as soon as it coats the spoon, around 170-175F; acid from the oranges lowers the temperature at which the eggs will scramble.
- Seville orangesThese are bitter marmalade oranges, in season roughly January to February in the northern hemisphere and rarely stocked otherwise. Three of them yield something like 1/2 to 2/3 cup of sharp juice; a workable stand-in is sweet orange juice with the juice of a lemon added to restore the acidity.
- A pint of creamAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, about 2 1/2 US cups. "Thick cream" means double cream at roughly 48 percent butterfat; US heavy cream at 36 percent will thicken adequately but sets softer.
- Sugar rubbed on lemon-rindBefore boxed zesters, cooks dragged a lump of loaf sugar over the peel until it was saturated with oil, then crushed it. Finely grated zest of one lemon stirred into about 1/3 cup of sugar does the same job.
- Sweetening is left to youNo quantity is given for the sugar, and with bitter oranges it needs to be generous. Start at 1/3 cup, taste the cold mixture before it goes on the heat, and remember chilled custard tastes less sweet than warm.
- Strain and temperStrain the juice as instructed to catch pips and pulp, and add it to the beaten eggs before the cream goes in, as the recipe has it. Whisking the acid into already-warm cream is the surest way to break the mixture.
- The quarter of an hourFifteen minutes is realistic for this volume over water, but it is a guide, not a target. Judge by thickness, then strain into the glass dish and chill for two or three hours; it firms considerably as it cools.
- YieldFive or six persons, as stated, though the recipe serves it from one glass dish rather than in individual glasses. Sifted sugar over the top was the period finish; grated nutmeg suits it just as well given the nutmeg already inside.
Orange fool is one of the oldest surviving forms of an English fool, appearing in seventeenth-century receipt books as "orange foole" long before the raw whipped-cream-and-gooseberry version came to dominate the name; the early versions that survive are generally cooked custards flavoured with bitter orange juice and spice, much as this one is. The name's origin is unsettled — it is often traced to the French fouler, to crush or press, though the plainer explanation, that a fool was something trifling, is at least as likely. Seville oranges reached British kitchens in winter cargoes from Spain and were valued precisely for being too sour to eat, which made them a common souring agent for sauces, punches and sweet creams alongside lemons.