Home › Wholesome Cocoanut Desserts › Cocoanut Orange Jelly
Cocoanut Orange Jelly
1 cup Dromedary Cocoanut 3 oranges 3/4 cup sugar 2 egg-yolks, beaten 3 tablespoons powdered gelatine 2 cups hot water Cut the oranges in halves, and remove the pulp and juice. Chill the orange shells. Strain the orange juice into a bowl, add the cocoanut, sugar, yolks of eggs, grated rind and strained juice of lemon, and gelatine dissolved in water. Chill and serve in the orange shells. Decorate with Dromedary Cocoanut. DROMEDARY
A brand pamphlet dessert from the era when powdered gelatine and a set of orange shells counted as an elegant course. The method has a real problem at its centre, and a couple of smaller puzzles in the ingredient list.
- Why this one failsThe two beaten egg yolks are never cooked. They are stirred into juice, sugar and gelatine dissolved in hot water, then chilled and served. Water hot enough to melt gelatine cools rapidly once it meets a bowl of cold citrus juice, so the yolks never reach and hold a pasteurising temperature; the finished jelly is a raw-egg dish. Use a current recipe if you want an orange gelatine dessert.
- Acid does not make it safeThe orange and lemon juice lower the pH but do not pasteurise anything. Acidity is not a substitute for heat where Salmonella in shell eggs is concerned, and a cold-set jelly gives the mixture hours at refrigerator temperature to be handled and served.
- The missing lemonThe method calls for "grated rind and strained juice of lemon" but no lemon appears in the ingredient list. The quantity is genuinely unspecified; one lemon is the likely reading, though the book gives no basis for it.
- Gelatine strength has changedGelatine strength -- Three tablespoons of powdered gelatine is roughly four modern envelopes (about 2 1/4 teaspoons each, each setting around two cups of liquid), against two cups of water plus the fruit juice. By modern standards that reads as a very stiff set. Bloom strength was less standardised in the period than it is now, so period quantities are not a reliable guide.
- Dromedary CocoanutThe brand's shredded coconut was sold moist rather than dry-desiccated. Unsweetened desiccated coconut from a supermarket today is drier, which changes the texture of anything built on this list; whether the period pack was sweetened is not clear from the recipe.
- YieldThree oranges halved gives six shells, which is the serving count the recipe implies. Two cups of water plus the juice may well be more liquid than six shells will hold.
Dromedary was the grocery brand of the Hills Brothers Company of New York, best known for packaged dates and shredded coconut, and like many American food firms of the early twentieth century it published small recipe booklets to promote uses for its packages. Gelatine desserts were a natural vehicle: granulated gelatine had become cheap and reliable enough for domestic use by this period, and a moulded or shell-served jelly needed no oven. Serving a fruit jelly back in its own hollowed rind was a common party presentation of the period, applied to oranges, lemons and melons.