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Macedoine of Oranges
Use rule for Orange Jelly. Cover the bottom of a charlotte russe mold with jelly. Chill, decorate with sections of oranges, add another layer of jelly, decorate the sides as well as bottom, and so continue until dish is filled. 2 tablespoons gelatine cup cold water 1 cup boiling water
A layered gelatine mould rather than a stirred fruit salad, and the whole thing hinges on patience: each layer must be set firm before the next goes in, or the sections drift and the tiers blur together.
- The truncated ingredient listThe line as printed reads "2 tablespoons gelatine cup cold water 1 cup boiling water" — a fraction has dropped out before "cup cold water." Comparable recipes of the period commonly soften gelatine in something like half a cup of cold water to a cup of boiling liquid, but the original as given is genuinely incomplete.
- "Use rule for Orange Jelly""Rule" means recipe; the book assumes you will turn back to its orange jelly entry, which would supply the sugar and orange juice (and probably lemon). Without it you have only the gelatine and water quantities, which are the soaking and dissolving liquids, not the flavouring.
- Gelatine strengthTwo tablespoons of granulated gelatine is 6 teaspoons, nearer two and a half modern quarter-ounce envelopes (about 2 1/4 teaspoons each) — and old gelatine varied in strength, and was often used generously to guarantee a mould that would stand up on a plate. Expect a firmer, more sliceable set than a modern dessert jelly.
- Charlotte russe mouldA plain round tin, usually with straight or slightly flaring sides, commonly somewhere between one and two quarts. Any straight-sided mould, loaf tin or even a clean tin can of similar volume will do; the shape shows off the horizontal bands of fruit.
- Preparing the orangesSections here means segments lifted free of the membranes, peel and pith cut away. Membrane left on goes tough and leathery in the set jelly and spoils the clean look the recipe is built around.
- Decorating the sidesTo stick sections to the wall of the mould, let each layer of jelly cool to the consistency of raw egg white, press the fruit against the tin, and chill until tacky before pouring the next layer. Pouring warm jelly over set jelly will melt the surface and float the fruit.
- Chilling timeAllow 20 to 30 minutes in the refrigerator between layers and at least four hours, preferably overnight, for the finished mould. The recipe was written for an icebox and gives no times at all.
- Unmoulding and yieldDip the mould briefly in warm — not hot — water, run a thin knife round the rim, and invert onto a chilled plate. A quart mould serves six to eight.
Macédoine is French kitchen shorthand for a mixture of many small cut things, fruit in a dessert, diced vegetables in a savoury course; the name is generally traced to Macedonia and the polyglot empire of Alexander, a joke about many peoples in one state that had entered French culinary vocabulary well before the nineteenth century. Lowney's Cook Book belongs to the era when clear gelatine work was a display skill: commercial granulated gelatine had spared cooks the long labour of boiling calves' feet, and cookbooks responded by asking home cooks to build the elaborate layered and decorated moulds that had previously been the province of professional confectioners. The charlotte russe mould specified here was sold and listed for household use by this date, which is why a home cookbook can call for one without comment, and the instruction to decorate the sides as well as the bottom is the whole point of the dish — the reward is the moment it comes out of the tin whole.</history>}