Home › The Principles of Cookery › Orange Sponge
Orange Sponge
Put into a pan half a pint of hot water, a table-spoonful of castor sugar, half an ounce of leaf gelatine, and the thinly pared rind of two oranges. Stir over the fire till the gelatine is melted. Strain into a basin, and add the juice of the two oranges. Let it cool a little, and add the white of a raw egg. Whisk till it becomes a stiff froth. Before it becomes quite stiff pour it into a damp mould, put in a cool place, or on ice, and when set turn it out. Probable cost, 1s.
A Victorian jellied whip: gelatine, orange, and raw egg white beaten to a foam and left to set cold. The technique is sound, but the egg is the problem.
- The raw egg white never gets hotThe gelatine liquid is strained, then deliberately cooled before the white goes in, and nothing afterwards raises the mixture above room temperature. The white is eaten raw, and shell eggs can carry Salmonella on the shell and occasionally within. A whipped, aerated dessert then sits for an hour or more at cool-but-not-cold temperatures while it sets, which is exactly the window in which any contamination multiplies.
- Who it puts at riskUncooked egg white is a recognised hazard for children, older people, anyone pregnant, and anyone immunocompromised. If you want an orange sponge of this kind, use a current recipe written with that risk in mind rather than adapting this one.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fluid ounces against the American 8, though imperial fluid ounces are slightly smaller, so by volume the difference is nearer a fifth. Cassell's measures are imperial, which matters here because the ratio of liquid to gelatine sets the whole dish.
- Leaf gelatine, then and nowHalf an ounce is about 14 g, but Victorian leaf gelatine was not sold by graded bloom strength and was more variable than modern leaf, and not necessarily of the same setting power. A straight substitution of today's sheets at that weight risks a rubbery, over-firm result.
- Castor sugarSimply superfine sugar, milled finer than granulated so it dissolves quickly. A single tablespoon for something over half a pint of liquid makes this a distinctly tart, barely sweet dessert by modern taste.
- Pared rind"Thinly pared" means the coloured zest only, taken off in strips with a knife or peeler. Any white pith carried over turns the finished sponge bitter, and it steeps in hot liquid long enough for that to show.
- Probable costOne shilling, the running price note Cassell's gives throughout.
Whips, sponges and creams of this sort filled the sweet course of British middle-class dinners from the 1860s onward, and they depended on commercial gelatine. Before sheet and later powdered gelatine became widely available, a cook who wanted a moulded jelly had to boil down calves' feet or use isinglass, a long and smelly job that put such dishes largely out of reach of households without a full kitchen staff. Packaged gelatine collapsed that labour into a few minutes, and the cookery press responded with many near-identical formulas distinguished only by their flavouring: lemon sponge, coffee sponge, wine sponge, orange sponge. The whisked egg white is what distinguishes a "sponge" from a plain jelly, aerating the setting liquid so it turns out pale, opaque and light instead of clear.