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Strawberry Sponge
Make same as Blackberry Sponge, using one pint of strawberry juice, one cup of sugar, a half box of gelatine, a half pint of boiling water, and four eggs.
A gelatine sponge of this type is built by dissolving the gelatine, chilling the sweetened juice to the point of setting, and whipping it with beaten egg — and there the recipe runs into a problem that cannot be worked around.
- The eggs are never cookedThe eggs are almost certainly not cooked -- the half pint of boiling water appears to be used only to dissolve the gelatine, and it is diluted at once by a pint of cold juice. The method itself is not printed here (it is carried over from the Blackberry Sponge), but nothing in this formula brings four eggs to 160F, so the whites, and possibly the yolks, are eaten raw in a dessert that then sits for hours at refrigerator temperature or cooler. This is a recognised route for Salmonella in shell eggs; a current recipe for a cold gelatine sponge or mousse should be used instead.
- Half a box of gelatineA box of granulated gelatine in this period commonly held about an ounce, so half a box is roughly 1/2 oz, or two of today's 1/4-oz envelopes — about 1 1/2 tablespoons. Box sizes varied between makers, and sheet gelatine is not interchangeable by volume with the granulated product.
- A pint of strawberry juiceTwo cups of strained juice takes on the order of two quarts of ripe hulled berries, crushed and pressed through a jelly bag or fine sieve, though the yield varies with the fruit. The original assumes you are already sitting on a glut.
- One cup of sugarThat is sweet by modern standards for a pint of juice, though in a set and whipped dessert sugar affects texture as well as flavour; cutting it heavily will change the result in more than sweetness.
- "Sponge" is a texture, not a cakeThe name refers to the aerated, foamy set achieved by whipping the mixture as it thickens. It is not baked and contains no flour, and it belongs with the mousses and Bavarians rather than with sponge cake.
- YieldRoughly a quart and a half of whipped mixture once aerated — six to eight servings in moulds or glasses.
Cold gelatine desserts like this one belong to the decades when granulated gelatine, sold in one-ounce boxes and needing no long simmering of calves' feet, put jellies and sponges within reach of an ordinary household cook. That convenience is exactly why a book of hot weather dishes is full of them: before mechanical refrigeration, summer cookery meant keeping the range cold and leaning on the icebox, and a fruit sponge could be assembled in a few minutes over a small kettle and then left to set on the ice. Strawberries, often said to be among the first substantial fruits of the season, were the natural candidate, and recipe writers of the era routinely gave one master method — here a blackberry sponge — and then a string of variations differing only in the juice.