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Orange Gelatine
Make as for Lemon Jelly No. 2, using instead of one quart of water a pint each of orange juice and water and the juice of one lemon.
This is a variation rather than a standalone recipe: it takes the base formula from Lemon Jelly No. 2 and swaps half the liquid for fresh orange juice. Everything hinges on the gelatine ratio in that parent recipe, so a few points are worth spelling out.
- The missing base recipeWithout Lemon Jelly No. 2 in front of you the gelatine quantity is genuinely unknown. Period jellies of this type generally used somewhere around 1/2 oz of granulated gelatine (about two envelopes) per quart of liquid, softened in a little cold water and dissolved in the hot portion, with sugar to taste — but treat that as a reconstruction, not a conversion of the original.
- Total liquidA pint of orange juice plus a pint of water plus the juice of one lemon is a quart and a couple of tablespoons. That small excess is not enough to affect the set.
- Do not boil the juiceDissolve the gelatine in the hot water and sugar, then stir in the cold orange and lemon juice off the heat. Boiling fresh citrus juice dulls the flavour and gives the finished jelly a cooked, marmalade note the recipe is not after.
- Fresh oranges varyA pint of juice takes roughly 6 to 8 medium oranges depending on variety. Older market oranges could be sharper than the sweet varieties usual today; taste and add lemon juice beyond the one specified if the mixture is flat.
- StrainingStrain the juice through fine cloth or a fine sieve before combining. Pulp and membrane cloud the jelly, and clarity was prized in a moulded fruit jelly of this kind.
- SettingRinse the mould in cold water before filling, and allow at least 4 to 6 hours in the refrigerator — longer for a large mould. To unmould, dip briefly in warm, not hot, water.
- YieldA quart of jelly serves six to eight as a dessert, or fills a standard 1-quart ring mould with a little left over for a small dish.
Gelatine desserts of this kind belong to the period when packaged granulated gelatine turned a laborious dish into a domestic one. Earlier cooks had to render their own jelly stock by boiling calves' feet or isinglass and then clarifying it, which is why moulded jellies were long a mark of a well-staffed kitchen; commercially prepared sheet and granulated gelatine, widely available in American and British households by the closing decades of the nineteenth century, made a clear moulded jelly something an ordinary cook could produce on an ordinary afternoon. That shift also explains why such a recipe can lean on a cross-reference to another lemon jelly method rather than spelling everything out: once the gelatine ratio is fixed, everything else is a matter of substituting the flavouring liquid.