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Six Tangerine Oranges
One pint of Jelly.
Peel the oranges and take away every morsel of white skin very carefully, quarter them carefully not to break the skin and let the juice out. Cover the bottom of the mould with a little jelly, let it set until cold, then arrange the quarters of orange with great precision and neatness all round the mould overlapping each other, carefully pour in a little jelly to cover these quarters, and when quite set repeat this, until the mould is full. When set, turn out and serve.
A layered fruit jelly, and the whole of it is a patience exercise: the mould is built up in thin stages so the segments stay suspended rather than floating to the top. Nothing here is difficult, but nothing can be hurried either.
- The hinge: build in thin layersEach pour must be only deep enough to cover the fruit already set, and it must be cold but still liquid when it goes in. Warm jelly will melt the set surface beneath and the segments will shift; a full pour at once floats them all to the top of the mould, which becomes the base of the turned-out jelly.
- What "one pint of jelly" meansAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, about 2 1/2 US cups. The recipe does not say which jelly; in a book of this period it would most likely be a clear wine, lemon or orange jelly, set with gelatine or isinglass and probably clarified with egg white rather than a fruit-flavoured packet dessert.
- Gelatine strengthSet it slightly firmer than you would a spoon jelly, since it has to be turned out and hold vertical layers: roughly 5 to 6 leaves of platinum-grade gelatine, or about 2 1/2 to 3 teaspoons of powdered gelatine, to the pint. Too soft and the walls slump the moment the mould is lifted.
- Mould sizeA pint of jelly plus six tangerines needs a mould rather larger than a pint, since the fruit itself takes up a good part of the volume. Too large a mould and you will not have enough jelly to bring the fruit to the rim.
- Preparing the fruitAfter peeling, strip every thread of pith — it is bitter and shows white against the jelly. Leave the segment membranes intact; they are what keeps the quarters whole and the jelly clear. A pierced segment bleeds juice that clouds the surrounding layer.
- ChillingThe original says only to let each layer set until cold, which in its day meant a cool larder or a mould stood in ice. A refrigerator does the same work: allow 20 to 30 minutes for each thin layer to set, and 4 hours or overnight for the finished mould.
- Turning outDip the mould in hot water for 5 to 10 seconds, no longer, then invert onto a wetted plate so the jelly can be slid into position. Wetting the plate first is the difference between a centred dessert and one sitting off the edge.
- YieldServes 4 to 6 as a light sweet.
Tangerines take their name from Tangier, the Moroccan port through which small loose-skinned mandarins reached Europe in the earlier nineteenth century; by the time of late-Victorian and Edwardian cookery manuals they were a familiar winter luxury in Britain, arriving with the Christmas fruit trade. This recipe belongs to the great age of the moulded jelly, when reliable commercial gelatine was gradually displacing the day-long labour of boiling calves' feet, and a clear jelly with fruit suspended in deliberate patterns became a standard test of a cook's neatness rather than her stamina. The instruction to arrange the quarters "with great precision" is the point of the dish.