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PEARS IN JELLY (a pretty dish for a Juvenile party)
Peel six or eight large pears, cut them into halves, take out the cores, and throw the fruit as they are done into cold water to keep them from becoming discoloured. Put them into a saucepan with as much syrup as will cover them, and let them stew gently until they are tender, but unbroken. The quantity of sugar to be put into the syrup will depend upon the quality of the pears, as some are naturally much sweeter than others. When sufficiently cooked, drain the pears from the syrup, brush them over with the beaten yolk of an egg, sprinkle powdered and sifted sugar thickly over them, and arrange them on a glass dish. Supposing there is a pint and a half of syrup, dissolve in it an ounce of gelatine which has been soaked in as much cold water as will cover it, for one hour. Let it boil quickly for five or six minutes, colour with two or three drops of cochineal, and strain it through a jelly-bag over the pears. Put the dish into a cool place, and when the jelly is quite stiff it is ready for serving. Time, about one hour to stew the pears. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A Victorian party centrepiece that turns on one step no modern kitchen should copy: the pears are brushed with raw egg yolk and then set in cold jelly, so the egg is never brought to any temperature at all. The notes below explain the recipe rather than repair it; for pears in jelly today, use a current recipe.
- The raw yolk glazeThe drained pears are painted with beaten egg yolk purely to make the sifted sugar adhere, then chilled and served. Nothing cooks that yolk — the pears are drained, not boiling, and the jelly is strained over them and left to set in a cool place. Raw yolk held at refrigerator or larder temperature carries a Salmonella risk, and the dish is explicitly aimed at children, who are among those least able to tolerate it.
- CochinealTwo or three drops of cochineal colouring gave the jelly its pink. Cochineal itself is still a permitted food colour (carmine, E120), made from the dried scale insect, but the Victorian bottled preparations were of variable strength, and some were prepared with ammonia or with alum. It is a known allergen for a small number of people.
- Gelatine strengthAn ounce of gelatine to a pint and a half of syrup is a firm set by modern standards. Nineteenth-century gelatine and isinglass were less consistent than today's standardised leaf and powder, and quantities in period recipes tend to be generous. Boiling gelatine hard for five or six minutes, as directed here, also weakens its setting power.
- The syrupNo sugar quantity is given: the recipe leaves it to the cook, since "some are naturally much sweeter than others". Stewing syrups of the period were commonly made in the region of a pound of sugar to a pint of water, though the proportions vary from book to book.
- An hour to stewThe hour suits the hard cooking pears of the day, such as the Catillac, which need long gentle poaching to soften without collapsing. A modern dessert pear will be tender in far less time and may break up if left an hour.
- Jelly-bagA conical flannel or felt bag hung from a stand, used to clarify jelly by slow gravity drip. A double layer of muslin in a sieve does the same job.
- Probable cost1s 2d — fourteen pence — for a dish serving five or six. Cassell's costed nearly every recipe, which is why the book was as much a budgeting tool as a cookery manual.
This is a "pretty dish" in the phrase of its own title — a recipe valued as much for appearance as flavour, in an era when a table was expected to be looked at before it was eaten. The trick of setting whole or halved fruit in tinted jelly depended on cheap commercial gelatine, which by the second half of the nineteenth century had displaced the laborious business of boiling calves' feet and had put moulded jelly within reach of ordinary households. The pink from cochineal was the standard confectioner's tint before coal-tar dyes took over, and the sugar-frosted pears imitate, in miniature, the crystallised-fruit displays of the professional confectioner. The phrase "a juvenile party" marks it as nursery-adjacent food: children's parties had become a distinct social occasion by around this period, with their own repertoire of jellies, creams and trifles served in glass so the colour showed.