Home › The Principles of Cookery › Oranges Filled with Jelly
Oranges Filled with Jelly
When a large variety of dishes is required, orange-skins are sometimes emptied entirely of the fruit, cut out in the shape of baskets, and filled with bright clear jelly of different colours. They look pretty; very great care and a sharp knife, however, are required to make them. The handle of the basket should be cut across the stalk-end of the fruit, and should be fully half an inch wide. The basket-part should take up half of the orange. The best way to make these baskets is to mark out their shape first without piercing the fruit, then take away the quarters of the rind which will not be required, and pass the flat part of a tea-spoon carefully under the handle to separate it from the fruit, which must then be pressed out through the empty spaces. The jelly should be nearly cold before it is put into the skins. Probable cost, oranges, 1d. each. (See JELLY IN ORANGE SKINS.)
This is a construction technique rather than a formula — Cassell's assumes you already have a pan of setting jelly and a cross-reference to consult for it. The work is all in the carving.
- The hinge: jelly temperatureThe jelly must be cooled to the point where it is thick and syrupy but not yet set — roughly the consistency of raw egg white. Poured hot it will soften the pith and leak through any nick in the rind; poured set it will not level out.
- Choosing the fruitThick-skinned navel oranges carve far better than thin-skinned juicing varieties, which tear. Pick fruit that sits flat or shave a sliver from the base so the baskets do not roll on the plate.
- Carving orderScore the outline with a scalpel or a very sharp paring knife before cutting through, as instructed — the score line keeps the blade from wandering. Cut the handle across the stalk end so the two attachment points fall on the tough stem axis rather than the soft cheeks.
- Removing the fleshThe teaspoon under the handle is the key move; a small offset spatula or grapefruit knife does the same job. Work the segments out through the side openings in pieces rather than trying to press the whole fruit out at once, and scrape the inside clean of pith so the jelly reads clear.
- The jelly itselfA Victorian clear jelly generally meant calf's-foot, isinglass or packaged gelatine, clarified with egg white. Modern leaf gelatine at roughly 6 sheets per pint should give a jelly firm enough to hold a cut edge, depending on the brand; powdered gelatine works but is less brilliant. Colouring of the period came from things like cochineal, saffron and spinach greening — food colouring now does it.
- Setting them uprightNest the baskets in a muffin tin or in a tray of crumpled foil before filling, or they tip. Refrigerate three to four hours.
- Yield and servingOne orange gives one basket. Count on one per person as part of a larger dessert course, and serve them the day they are made — the rind dries and the cut edges darken overnight.
- The cost note"Probable cost, oranges, 1d. each" is a pre-decimal penny — a price the book evidently thought unremarkable for a fruit used here mainly as a container.
Cassell's places this among the flourishes of a large table, and that is exactly what it is: a dish whose whole point is that it looks like something else. Fruit shells used as serving vessels are older than the Victorian dining room, and the carved handled basket sits comfortably in the nineteenth-century taste for elaborate cold sweets, by which time clear gelatine jellies had become more reliable. The instruction to fill them with jelly "of different colours" points to the same taste that produced ribbon jellies and moulded charlottes. An orange is here costed at a penny and treated as a disposable container.