Lemon Froth
Dissolve a box of gelatine in a pint of warm water, then add a pint of cold water. In winter three pints may be used instead of two. Add the juice of six lemons and the rind; cut them as for jelly. Let it stand till it begins to harden. Then take out the rind and add the whites of twelve eggs beaten to a stiff froth, Beat them into the jelly, put in a glass bowl, and serve in saucers.--Mrs. A. C.
A whipped gelatine dessert of the sort that filled Victorian supper tables. It cannot be recommended today, because the twelve egg whites are folded into cool jelly and never cooked at any stage.
- Raw egg whites, twelve of themThe gelatine is dissolved in warm water and then let stand until it begins to set, so it is well below any temperature that would pasteurise egg. Egg whites are not free of Salmonella risk, and twelve eggs means twelve chances that one is contaminated; the froth is then served cold in saucers.
- Nothing in the recipe controls the riskLemon juice and gelatine do not pasteurise anything. The acidity here is nowhere near enough to make raw egg safe, and the sugar-free, high-moisture jelly is a comfortable medium for bacteria at room temperature. If you want a lemon whip, use a current recipe built on pasteurised whites or a cooked base.
- "A box of gelatine"In the 1870s this meant a boxed retail packet of sheet or shredded gelatine, probably on the order of an ounce rather than a modern quarter-ounce envelope. The original gives no weight, so the strength of the set is genuinely unknown.
- The winter note"In winter three pints may be used instead of two" is a reminder that these kitchens had no thermostat. Cold larders let a weaker jelly set, so the cook stretched the same box of gelatine further in January than in July.
- Cutting the rind "as for jelly"This most likely means pared in strips, steeped for flavour and lifted out again before the froth goes in. It reads as a flavouring technique rather than a garnish.
- ServingTwo pints of jelly (three in winter) plus twelve whipped whites makes a very large volume of froth: piled into a glass bowl and spooned into individual saucers at table, this was clearly meant for a large company.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, gathered contributions from Virginia housekeepers, and the initials at the end of this receipt are the book's usual way of crediting one of them. Lemon froth belongs to a long family of whips, snows and sponges that ran from the eighteenth century through the Victorian period, in which a setting jelly is beaten with egg white until it doubles and turns opaque. Such dishes became far more common after commercially boxed gelatine reached American grocers in the middle of the nineteenth century, replacing the day-long labour of boiling calves' feet and clarifying the stock. The result was cheap, showy and pale, and it suited a period that admired trembling, translucent food served in cut glass.