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ORANGES, MOULDED (a pretty supper dish)
This dish, though very pretty, is rather difficult to prepare. Peel three or four large oranges, and divide them into sections, being careful not to break the thin skin which separates them. Oil a small plain mould thoroughly. Boil a quarter of a pound of loaf sugar in three table-spoonfuls of water to crackling height, dip the edges of the orange-sections into this, arrange them in layers round the sides only of the mould, and fasten them together with the sugar. When they are firm, turn them on a dish, and fill the centre with whipped cream. Time, ten or twelve minutes to boil the sugar. Probable cost, exclusive of the cream, 6d. Sufficient for a small mould.
A piece of Victorian sugar-work dressed as a dessert: orange segments cemented into a shell with hard-crack syrup, unmoulded, and filled with cream. The whole thing hinges on the sugar being at the right stage and on you working fast enough before it sets.
- "Crackling height"This is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F on a sugar thermometer. Syrup at this point sets glassy and brittle; anything cooler stays tacky and the shell will slump. The ten or twelve minutes given is a rough guide only, since it depends entirely on your pan and heat.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined white sugar sold in a hard cone and broken up as needed. Ordinary granulated sugar is the equivalent. A quarter pound is about half a cup, boiled with three tablespoons of water.
- Dry oranges are essentialAny juice on the segments will seize and cloud the syrup and the pieces will not adhere. Peel the oranges, pull the sections apart with the membrane unbroken, and blot them dry before you start the sugar.
- Working speedHard-crack syrup begins to thicken within a minute or two off the heat. Have the mould oiled and the fruit laid out before you boil, and keep the pan over a very low flame or in a bowl of hot water to buy time.
- Oiling the mouldUse a flavourless oil and a thin, complete film over the whole interior. Sugar sticks to any dry patch and the shell will crack when you turn it out.
- Line the sides onlyThe recipe is explicit that the sections go round the sides, leaving the centre free for the cream. Avoid warming the mould to release the shell, since that would soften the sugar.
- Assemble at the last minuteSugar draws moisture from both fruit and air, so the shell will soften as it stands and fares badly in a refrigerator. Fill with softly whipped cream and serve straight away.
- YieldThe recipe says only 'Sufficient for a small mould', and gives no quantity for the cream, which is priced separately from the 6d.
Moulded fruit in spun or set sugar belongs to a class of Victorian supper dishes judged chiefly by appearance: the pleasure lay in a construction that looked impossible and was eaten in a few minutes. The recipe is candid in admitting the thing is "rather difficult to prepare," and in pricing it at sixpence exclusive of cream, which places it among the cheap-but-showy dishes a household with more time than money could attempt. Oranges themselves had become common in British shops by the later nineteenth century, arriving in quantity from Spain and the Mediterranean, so the fruit was no longer the luxury it had been a century earlier; the expense here is really the sugar and the labour. The technique is a domestic descendant of the confectioner's sugar-work that dressed grand dinner tables, reduced to something one cook could manage with a saucepan and a plain mould.