Coffee Mange
One cupful very strong coffee, one cupful sugar, one cupful rich cream. Dissolve half a box gelatine in two cupfuls milk, over the fire. Add the cream last, after the rest is cool. Pour in a mould to congeal.--Mrs. Mc G.
A coffee blancmange, set with gelatine and turned out of a mould. The whole thing hinges on getting the gelatine fully dissolved without boiling it, and on adding the cream only once the base has cooled.
- Half a box of gelatineA "box" of gelatine in this period is usually reckoned at about an ounce, though box sizes varied, so half a box is roughly 1/2 oz — about two 1/4-oz envelopes of modern granulated gelatine. Period gelatine was probably less consistent in strength than today's; two envelopes will give a mould firm enough to turn out, one and a half a softer, spoonable one.
- Do not boil it"Over the fire" means warm the milk only until the gelatine is completely dissolved and the liquid is clear, around 120-140F. Prolonged boiling can weaken gelatine's setting power, and boiled milk takes on a cooked, skinned flavour.
- Very strong coffeeA cupful of coffee brewed at roughly double normal strength, or a cup of strong drip coffee reinforced with a spoonful of instant. It is diluted by three cups of dairy, so anything ordinary will read as beige and vague.
- Add the cream last, and coldThe instruction is explicit in the recipe. Cream stirred into a hot coffee-and-gelatine base may curdle, especially if the coffee is acidic. Cool the base to lukewarm, stir in the cold cream, then mould.
- SugarOne cup to four cups of liquid is sweet by modern taste for a coffee dessert; three-quarters of a cup suits most palates. Dissolve it in the warm milk rather than the cold cream.
- Congealing"Congeal" means set. Rinse the mould with cold water before filling, and chill at least four hours, better overnight. Nineteenth-century kitchens relied on an icebox or a cold cellar; a refrigerator is faster and safer.
- UnmouldingDip the mould in hot water for five to ten seconds, run a thin knife around the rim, and invert onto a chilled plate. A metal mould releases far more readily than glass or ceramic.
- YieldAbout a quart, which serves six. It benefits from something unsweetened alongside — plain whipped cream or a few toasted almonds.
"Mange" here is simply blancmange with the front clipped off, a shorthand that turns up in American manuscript and community cookbooks of the period, though how widespread it was is hard to say. The original blancmange was a medieval European dish of pounded almonds and often shredded capon, white by definition; by the nineteenth century it had become a sweet moulded cream, thickened first with isinglass or calf's-foot jelly and later with commercial gelatine, and the "blanc" had stopped being literal — hence a coffee one. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, was assembled from contributions by named and initialled Virginia housewives, which is why this one arrives signed "Mrs. Mc G." and with the terseness of a recipe written for someone who already knows what a mould is. Packaged gelatine sold by the box is what makes the recipe so short: a generation earlier the cook would have spent hours boiling down calves' feet before she could think about the coffee.