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Yeomange
Soak one ounce of leaf gelatine, add the rind of a lemon, boil till the gelatine is dissolved. Remove the pan from the fire, let the contents cool, then add the beaten yolks of five eggs, half a pint of sherry, the juice of the lemon, and two ounces of sugar. Mix as well together, make the custard hot over the fire, but do not let it boil. Strain it through muslin, and pour it into a damp mould. Put in a cold place to set.
A wine custard set with gelatine and turned out of a mould — essentially a yellow blancmange. The instructions assume a cook who already knows the standard proportions of a jelly, so one key quantity is missing.
- The missing liquidNo water is specified for soaking and dissolving the gelatine, which makes the recipe ambiguous as printed. Period practice commonly put about one ounce of gelatine to a quart of total liquid; with half a pint of sherry and the lemon juice accounted for, something in the region of a pint and a half of water would be implied, but the book does not say so.
- Leaf gelatine has changedAn ounce of Victorian leaf gelatine is not necessarily an ounce of modern leaf. Today's sheets are graded by bloom strength (gold leaf is about 2 g each and is usually reckoned to set around 100 ml of liquid), whereas older product was unstandardised and of variable strength. Work from the setting power stated on your packet rather than the ounce weight.
- The hinge: do not boil the custardOnce the yolks go in, the mixture must be brought only to the point where it thickens and coats a spoon — about 175-180F. Above roughly 185F the yolks curdle and no amount of straining will restore the texture. Stir constantly over low heat or use a bowl set over simmering water.
- Why it is strainedMuslin catches the lemon rind, any thread of set gelatine, and any yolk that has begun to scramble. Skipping this step is the usual reason a moulded custard turns out speckled. A fine sieve lined with a doubled square of cheesecloth does the same job.
- SherryHalf a pint is 10 fl oz (about 285 ml) in imperial measure. The recipe specifies only 'sherry'; a dry to medium sherry suits the dish better than a cream sherry, which with the two ounces of sugar would tip it into cloying. The mixture is never boiled, so the alcohol is not cooked off, and this is not a dish for children.
- Damp mouldRinsing the mould with cold water and not drying it leaves a film that helps the set jelly release. To unmould, dip the outside in hot water for a few seconds, then invert onto a chilled wetted plate.
- Setting time and yield'A cold place' meant a larder, cellar or ice-box; use the refrigerator, and allow at least six hours, with overnight safer for a mould that has to stand up on a plate. On the assumed quantities the mixture comes to roughly a quart, serving six to eight in small portions -- it is rich.
The name is a puzzle of the sort that turns up often in Victorian cookery books, where dish names were copied from manuscript books and earlier printers without much scrutiny. It has been suggested that it belongs to the same family as blancmange — from blanc manger, 'white food' — the yolks and sherry here producing a yellow version instead, but this is conjecture rather than established etymology. What the recipe really represents is the moulded wine jelly that dominated the nineteenth-century dessert table once commercial gelatine, sold in leaves and later in packets, replaced the days-long business of boiling down calves' feet or hartshorn for a setting agent.