Home › Creams, Jellies and Cold Sweets › Jubilee Pudding
Jubilee Pudding
Ingredients.
One pint of Claret Jelly.
A gill of whipped Cream.
Quarter of an ounce of Gelatine.
Half an ounce of Preserved Cherries.
Half an ounce of Angelica.
Half an ounce of Preserved Ginger.
Half an ounce of Preserved Apricot.
Set a mould thickly with claret jelly. Whip the cream very stiffly and stir in the fruits chopped up, the gelatine melted, and the castor sugar. Fill in the centre of the mould with the whipped cream and fruits. Turn it out and serve with whipped cream round if liked; this will require a little more cream than the half pint for the centre, and can be left out or not according to taste.
A late-Victorian moulded cream: a shell of claret jelly lined into a mould, filled with whipped cream studded with candied fruit. The written quantities are inconsistent in a couple of places, and the gelatine handling is the part that decides whether it works.
- Gill and half pintA gill is 5 fl oz (about 140 ml) in British measure, so the ingredient list gives roughly two thirds of a cup of cream. The method then refers to "the half pint for the centre" — the amounts do not agree, and the fuller half pint (10 fl oz, 280 ml) is the more plausible reading for the filling.
- Castor sugar is not listedThe method calls for castor sugar but the ingredient list omits it. Sweeten the cream to taste; with this much candied fruit and ginger, a tablespoon or two of superfine sugar is ample.
- Melted gelatine is the hingeQuarter of an ounce (about 7 g, roughly two teaspoons of powder, or three to four leaves depending on the brand) must be bloomed, dissolved in a little water, and then cooled to barely warm before it goes into the cream. Poured in hot it deflates the whip; poured in too cool it sets in threads. Fold it in quickly and get the mould filled at once.
- Claret jellyA red wine jelly, set with gelatine and sweetened — the book assumes you have made it as a separate preparation. A pint (20 fl oz, 570 ml) is a generous quantity for lining a mould, since only the coating is used.
- Setting the mould thicklyChill the mould hard, pour in a little liquid jelly, and rotate it in ice or over ice water until a layer clings; repeat until the coat is a few millimetres thick. Modern refrigeration makes this far easier than it was with ice caves, but the mould still needs to be genuinely cold or the jelly slides off in sheets.
- AngelicaCandied angelica stems, sold for cake decoration and now scarce outside specialist suppliers. It contributes bright green colour and a faint muscat-celery flavour; candied citron or extra candied peel is a workable substitution.
- Turning outDip the mould in warm — not hot — water for a few seconds and invert onto a chilled plate. Allow at least four hours' setting, preferably overnight.
- YieldNo yield is given; a pint of jelly with the cream centre would plausibly serve six, more if you pipe the extra cream around the base.
The name points to a jubilee — most likely Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee of 1887 or the Diamond Jubilee of 1897, both of which produced a rash of commemorative dishes on hotel and household menus. Nothing about the pudding is intrinsically jubilee-like; the appeal is entirely visual, a ruby wine jelly casing a pale cream flecked with red cherries, green angelica and amber ginger and apricot. Moulded jellies and creams were a showpiece of the cold sweet course in British high-class cookery, and their prominence owed much to two developments: commercially refined gelatine, which replaced the labour of boiling calves' feet, and more reliable ice supplies, which let a cook set a lined mould without a purpose-built ice house.