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Pond Lily Dessert
Mrs. George Ives.
Half fill sherbet cup with Jello, any flavor. When nearly set, arrange split lady fingers in Pond Lilly form. Place small macaroon in center. Drop tablespoon whipped cream on macaroon and sprinkle with grated cocoanut and orange rind.
Alice Motzer.
An assembly dessert rather than a cooked one: the only technique is timing the gelatin so the ladyfingers will stand up in it. Everything else is arrangement.
- Sherbet cupA footed glass, commonly around 5-6 oz in this period, the same sort of vessel used for ice cream and fruit cup. Any small stemmed glass or coupe works; clear glass lets the set gelatin show through. "Nearly set" is the hinge: chill the gelatin until it is thick enough to hold a ladyfinger upright but still tacky at the surface, roughly the consistency of raw egg white -- in practice something in the region of an hour in the refrigerator, depending on quantity and temperature. Too soft and the petals slide flat; fully set and nothing will anchor.
- JelloHalf fill means about 2-3 oz of prepared gelatin per cup. One standard 3 oz box makes 2 cups, so a box serves six to eight of these. Lemon or orange gives the most convincing water-lily effect; raspberry reads as a pink lily.
- Split lady fingersSplit them lengthwise and stand them cut side in, points up, angling outward around the rim to suggest petals; how many halves a cup takes depends on the glass. Packaged ladyfingers are often crisp and brittle, so trim the ends with a serrated knife rather than snapping them.
- MacaroonIn this era a macaroon is the dense coconut or almond-paste drop cookie, not a French macaron. A single small one, about an inch across, sits in the middle as the flower's heart.
- CocoanutOlder recipes assume unsweetened dried shredded coconut. Sweetened flake will work but with the macaroon and gelatin already sweet, the unsweetened is closer to the intent.
- Whipped creamSweeten lightly or not at all, and whip only to soft peaks so the spoonful mounds without weeping. Assemble no more than an hour before serving; the cream slackens and the ladyfingers soften after that.
- YieldOne cup per person. Multiply from the gelatin box rather than the cup.
Community and church-society cookbooks are full of these shaped, garnished sweets, and they mark the moment when packaged gelatin dessert became cheap and reliable enough for ordinary households to treat as a decorating medium rather than a laborious calf's-foot project. Jell-O was being sold in flavored powdered form from the late 1890s and was heavily advertised as a dessert requiring no skill, which is exactly the promise this recipe trades on: no cooking at all, only arrangement, and a result grand enough for company. The water-lily form was a favorite naturalistic motif of the period, appearing in molded ices and salads as well; the recipe carries a double attribution — Mrs. George Ives at the head, Alice Motzer at the foot.