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Jerusalem Pudding
Boil a quarter of a cup of rice twenty minutes, drain and throw into a bowl of cold water. Cut three figs and three ounces of preserved ginger into tiny pieces, cover with a gill of sherry and soak fifteen minutes. Cover half a box of gelatine with half a cup of cold water and soak thirty minutes. Whip one pint of cream, put into a basin and stand on the ice or in a very cold place. Sprinkle over the cream half a cup of powdered sugar and a scant teaspoon of vanilla.
Drain the rice and spread it on a towel to dry, after which add it to the cream, stirring lightly; then add fruit, and lastly the dissolved gelatine, and stir into the mixture. Stir all slowly until it begins to harden, and then turn it into a mold that has been filled with water. Do not wipe the mold.-Mrs Clinton Locke, Chicago.
A gelatine-set whipped cream mold in the Victorian manner, with rice, figs and ginger folded through. Two things in the original need translating: the gelatine quantity and the fact that it must be melted before it meets the cold cream.
- The hinge: melt the gelatine, then temper itThe recipe says to add "the dissolved gelatine" but never tells you to dissolve it. After the 30-minute soak, set the bowl over hot water until the gelatine is clear and liquid, let it cool until it is barely warm, then drizzle it into the cream while stirring. Poured in hot it will slacken the cream; poured in cold it sets on contact and leaves rubbery threads through the pudding.
- Half a box of gelatinePeriod boxes of granulated gelatine were commonly reckoned at about an ounce, so half a box works out in the region of ½ oz, roughly 2 modern envelopes (about 14 g). That should give a set firm enough to unmold; if you want it softer on the spoon, use a single envelope and serve it in glasses.
- A gill of sherryHalf a cup. It is not cooked off, so use a sherry you would drink — a medium amontillado or an oloroso suits the figs and ginger better than a dry fino.
- Preserved gingerThis is stem ginger in heavy syrup, sold in jars; drain it before chopping. Crystallized ginger will do at the same weight, though it is sweeter and firmer. Three ounces is about half a cup once diced.
- The riceA quarter cup of long-grain or pudding rice boiled 20 minutes in plenty of water, then shocked cold and dried on a towel, is meant to stay in separate grains rather than dissolve into starch. Drying it matters — wet rice weeps into the cream.
- The mold"Filled with water" means rinsed out with cold water and left wet, which is why you are told not to wipe it. The film of water breaks the seal and lets the pudding slide out. Allow for the bulk of the whipped cream plus the rice, fruit and gelatine liquid: a mold of about 1½ to 2 quarts.
- Setting time and yieldNo chilling time is given. Four hours in the refrigerator, or overnight, will set it through. It serves six to eight, and it is rich enough that small portions are correct.
- "Stir all slowly until it begins to harden"Stir only until the mixture thickens enough to hold the rice and fruit in suspension, then pour at once. Past that point it sets in the bowl and you will be spooning lumps into the mold.
The name "Jerusalem" is often said to have been attached to sweets built from what were read as Eastern luxuries — figs, ginger, rice, sometimes almonds or dates — and if so the label is decorative rather than geographic; the dish belongs to the Anglo-American repertoire of cold gelatine molds, not to any Levantine tradition. Its ancestry is generally traced to the bavarois and the Charlotte Russe, sweetened whipped cream stiffened with gelatine and turned out of a shaped mold, a form made steadily easier for home cooks as prepared gelatine came to replace the labor of boiling down calves' feet. The recipe is signed with the donor's name and city — Mrs Clinton Locke, Chicago — so the page doubles as a record of what a well-provisioned Chicago household could buy: sherry, jarred stem ginger, and enough ice to keep a pint of cream cold while it was whipped by hand.