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Orange Jelly
Ingredients.
Half a pint of Orange-juice.
Half a pint of Water.
Juice of two Lemons.
Rind of three Oranges.
Three ounces of Loaf Sugar.
One ounce of French Gelatine.
Put the water, sugar, orange-rind, and gelatine into a stewpan, and let them simmer for ten minutes; skim and strain. Add the orange- and lemon-juice, pour into a mould, and set.
A straightforward moulded jelly, but the proportions are Victorian: a great deal of gelatine and very little sugar. Two details decide whether it works — the juice never goes near the heat, and the gelatine is softened before it simmers.
- The hinge: juice stays coldThe water, sugar, rind and gelatine are cooked; the orange and lemon juice go in only after straining. Boiling citrus juice flattens the aroma and gives a cooked, marmalade note, which is exactly what this jelly is meant to avoid. Let the strained syrup cool to lukewarm before adding the juice, or the same thing happens more slowly.
- Half a pintThis is an imperial pint of 20 fl oz, so half a pint is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups. You will need roughly 4 large juicing oranges for the juice and 3 more for the rind, though rind and juice can come from the same fruit if you pare before squeezing.
- French gelatineSheet or leaf gelatine; French-made gelatine was well thought of in this period, though the recipe says nothing beyond the name. One ounce is 28 g — around 14 modern leaves, or four 1/4 oz envelopes of powder. Soak leaves in cold water until floppy and squeeze them out before adding; powder should be sprinkled over the cold water and left to swell for five minutes.
- A very firm set28 g of gelatine to about 23 fl oz of liquid is roughly twice what a modern recipe uses. That is deliberate: the jelly had to stand up as a turned-out shape on a plate at room temperature. If you want a spoonable jelly rather than a sculptural one, halve the gelatine and serve it in glasses instead of a mould.
- Loaf sugarRefined cane sugar broken from a cone or block; granulated sugar is the direct substitute. Three ounces (85 g) makes a distinctly tart jelly by current taste, especially with two lemons in it. Taste the mixture before moulding and add sugar while it is still warm if you want it sweeter.
- Rind, not zest with pithPare the orange rind off in strips with a peeler, taking no white. Ten minutes' simmering extracts plenty of oil, and any pith in the pan will make the finished jelly bitter.
- Skim and strainGelatine throws a grey scum as it dissolves. Skim it, then strain through a fine sieve lined with muslin — clarity is the whole point of a jelly like this, and the strips of rind must all be removed.
- Moulding and turning outRinse the mould with cold water and do not oil it; oil clouds the surface. Chill 4 to 6 hours, or overnight for a large mould. To unmould, dip briefly in hot water, wipe dry, and invert onto a wetted plate so the jelly can be slid into position.
- YieldAbout 1 1/4 imperial pints of liquid, which fills a 1 1/2 pint mould and serves six.
Moulded fruit jellies were a set piece of the nineteenth-century dessert table, and their history is really the history of the setting agent. Before commercial gelatine, a clear jelly meant either calf's-foot stock boiled down and clarified with egg white — a full day's work — or expensive isinglass made from sturgeon swim bladders. Sheet gelatine reduced that labour to ten minutes in a stewpan, and cookery books of the 1880s and 90s fill their cold-sweet chapters accordingly. The heavy dose here reflects what such a jelly was for: not a soft pudding but a turned-out architectural shape, often layered or set around fruit, that had to survive being carried to the table and cut with a spoon in front of guests. Such books assumed a cold larder rather than a refrigerator, which is another reason the gelatine is generous.