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Confectionery (Pour quart of vinegar on quart)
Pour 1 quart of vinegar on 1 quart of raspberries, the next day strain it upon another quart of the fruit, and repeat this every day for six days.
Then add 1 pound of white sugar to every pint of the vinegar, and put it into a jar, which must be placed in a pot of boiling water to be scalded through.
Currant Wine.
To 1 quart of currant juice put 2 quarts of water and 1 pound of sugar. After mixing, let these stand twenty-four hours; then skim and put into a jug or barrel unstopped, and leave it to ferment in a cool place for a week or so. Then cork tightly, and bottle off when clear.
Raspberry Jam.
Mash a quantity of fine, ripe, dry raspberries, strew on them their own weight of loaf sugar, and half their weight of white currant juice. Boil them half an hour over a clear slow fire, skim them well, and put them into pots or glasses; tie them down with brandy papers, and keep them dry.
Strew on the sugar as quick as possible after the berries are gathered, and in order to preserve their flavor they must not stand long before boiling them. Strawberry Jam.
Bruise very fine some scarlet strawberries, gathered when quite ripe, and put to them a little juice of red currants. Beat and sift their weight in sugar, strew it over them, and put them into a preserving-pan. Set them over a clear slow fire, skim them, then boil them twenty minutes, and put them into glasses.
Raspberry Paste.
Mash 1 quart of raspberries, strain one-half, and put the juice to the other half; boil them a quarter of an hour, put to them a pint of red currant juice, and let them boil all together, till the raspberries are done enough. Then put 14 pounds of double-refined sugar into a clean pan, with as much water as will dissolve it, boil it to a sugar again; then put in the raspberries and juice, scald and pour them into glasses. Put them into a stove to dry, and turn them when necessary.
Pineapple Jelly.
Peel a pineapple of about 1 pound weight, cut it into slices about a quarter of an inch thick, and put these into a basin. Clarify 1 pound of loaf sugar with 1 pint of spring-water, the juice of 2 lemons, and half the white of an egg whipped with a little water; when thoroughly skimmed, strain the syrup on to the pineapple, allow it to boil for three minutes, then cover it down with a sheet of paper twisted round the basin, and allow the infusion to stand for several hours in order to extract the flavor. When about to mix the jelly, strain the syrup through a napkin into a basin, and put the pieces of pineapple to drain upon a sieve; add 2 ounces of clarified isinglass to the pineapple syrup, and then pour the jelly into a mould previously imbedded in rough ice.
Currant and Raspberry Jelly.
Pick the stalks from 1 quart of red currants and 1 quart of raspberries; then put these into a large basin with 1/2 a pound of pounded sugar and a gill of spring-water; bruise them thoroughly by squeezing them with the back part of the bowl of a wooden spoon against the sides of the basin; then throw the whole into a beaver jelly-bag and filter the juice, pouring it back into the bag until it runs through perfectly bright; next add 1/2 a pint of clarified syrup and 2 ounces of clarified isinglass to the juice, and pour the jelly into a mould placed in rough ice to receive it.
Punch Jelly.
Put the prepared stock from 4 calves-feet into a stewpan to melt on the stove fire; then withdraw it, and add thereto the following ingredients: Two pounds of loaf-sugar, the juice of 6 lemons and 4 oranges, the rind of 1 Seville orange and of 4 lemons, a nutmeg, 12 cloves and 2 sticks of cinnamon, a small cup of strong green tea, a pint of rum, and a pint of brandy. Stir these well together, then add 6 whites and 2 whole eggs whipped up with a little Sherry and spring-water, and continue whisking the punch on a brisk stove fire until it begins to simmer; then set it down by the side of the fire and cover the stewpan with its lid containing some live embers of charcoal; about ten minutes after pour the jelly into a flannel or beaver filtering-bag; keep pouring the jelly back into the bag until it becomes quite clear and bright, and when the whole has been run through set it in a mould in ice in the usual way.
Coffee Cream.
Roast 8 ounces of Mocha coffee-berries in a small preserving-pan over a stove fire, stirring it the whole time with a wooden spoon until it assumes a light brown color; then blow away the small burnt particles and throw the roasted coffee into a stewpan, and set it aside to allow the infusion to draw out the flavor of the coffee. Next strain this through a napkin into a stewpan containing 8 yolks of eggs and 12 ounces of sugar; add a very small pinch of salt, stir the cream over the stove fire until it begins to thicken; then quicken the motions of the spoon, and when the yolks of eggs are sufficiently set strain the cream through a tammy or sieve into a large basin. Mix a pint of whipped cream and 14 ounces of clarified isinglass in with this; pour the whole into a mould ready set in rough ice for the purpose, and when the cream has become firm dip the mould in warm water and turn the cream out on its dish.
Damson Cheese.
Boil the fruit in a sufficient quantity of water to cover it; strain the pulp through a very coarse sieve; to each pound add 4 ounces of sugar. Boil it till it begins to candy on the sides, then pour it into the moulds. Other kinds of plums may be treated in the same way, as also cherries, and several kinds of fruit. An Omelette Souffle.
Put 2 ounces of the powder of chestnuts into a skillet, then add 2 yolks of new-laid eggs, and dilute the whole with a little cream, or even a little water; when this is done and the ingredients well mixed, leaving no lumps, add a bit of the best fresh butter about the size of an egg and an equal quantity of powdered sugar; then put the skillet on the fire, and keep stirring the contents; when the cream is fixed and thick enough to adhere to the spoon, let it bubble up once or twice, and take it from the fire; then add of the white of an egg to those you have already set aside, and whip them to the consistency of snow; then amalgamate the whipped whites of eggs and the cream, stirring them with a light and equal hand; pour the contents into a deep dish, sift over with doublerefined sugar, and place the dish on a stove, with a fire over it as well as under, and in a quarter of an hour the cream will rise like an omelette souffle; as soon as it rises about four inches it is fit to serve up.
Orgeat Paste.
Blanch and pound of a pound of sweet and a 4 of a pound of bitter almonds; pound them in a mortar and wet them sufficiently with orange-
This is a run of separate confectionery entries from the same chapter, ranging from raspberry vinegar and jams through moulded jellies and creams. Most translate readily; two do not, and one measurement in the sugar quantities is beyond rescue.
- Bitter almondsThe closing Orgeat Paste calls for what appears to be a quarter pound of bitter almonds (the line is garbled in the original). Bitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nuts are ground and wetted; a quantity of that size carries enough cyanide precursor to be genuinely dangerous, and raw bitter almonds are not legally sold in the United States. Use a current recipe for orgeat, which relies on sweet almonds and a little almond extract for the same perfume.
- Currant wine and bottlingThe instruction to cork tightly and bottle a wine that has fermented only "a week or so" is how nineteenth-century households produced burst bottles. Sugar remaining in the must keeps generating carbon dioxide, and ordinary jars and corks will not hold that pressure. Fermentation must be finished and measured before anything is sealed.
- IsinglassIsinglass is a gelatin refined from the swim bladders of sturgeon and similar fish, sold as sheets or shreds that were soaked and clarified before use. Modern leaf or powdered gelatin does the same work in the pineapple, currant-and-raspberry, coffee and punch preparations; set the quantity by the gelatin manufacturer's ratio for a firm moulded jelly rather than by the ounce weights here.
- Rough ice"A mould set in rough ice" means a mould buried in coarsely broken ice, usually with salt worked through it to drop the temperature below freezing point. A refrigerator does the same job more slowly; allow four to six hours for a quart mould.
- SugarsLoaf and double-refined sugar were hard cones of highly purified sugar, broken and pounded before use. Granulated sugar is the direct equivalent by weight, and "beat and sift their weight in sugar" simply means weigh the fruit and match it.
- Vessels and clothsA "beaver jelly-bag" is a bag of dense felted wool; a doubled square of flannel or a jelly bag in a stand does the same. A "tammy" is a fine worsted straining cloth, replaced by a fine sieve lined with muslin. The "skillet" in the omelette souffle is used as a small pan for stirring a cream over the fire; the book does not define the term.
- Heat"A clear slow fire" is a low burner: jam at a steady simmer that you can stir back from the sides. The souffle finished with "a fire over it as well as under" describes a hot hearth with an overhead lid of embers, heat from above as well as below; the book gives no temperature, so judge it by the rise rather than by a setting.
- Brandy papersRounds of paper dipped in brandy and laid directly on the surface of hot jam, then a second sheet tied over the rim. The alcohol suppressed surface mould in an era before reliable sealed jars; standard preserving jars processed in a water bath are the current practice.
- YieldThe raspberry vinegar gives a quart or more of sweetened syrup, to be diluted for drinking rather than used neat. The raspberry jam makes roughly three to four half-pint jars from a quart of fruit; the strawberry jam gives no quantity of fruit, so scale it the same way. The moulded jellies and the coffee cream serve six to eight.
Raspberry vinegar of the kind that opens this run was a summer drink concentrate rather than a salad dressing: a spoonful in a glass of cold water made the standard nineteenth-century "shrub", valued in sickrooms as much as at table. The repeated steeping of fresh fruit in the same vinegar is a straightforward way of building flavour without heat, and the same logic governs the jams alongside it, where currant juice is added to raspberries and strawberries because currants are unusually rich in pectin and acid and will set fruit that would otherwise stay slack. The moulded jellies and the punch jelly belong to a different tradition altogether, that of the professional confectioner: filtering repeatedly through a felted bag until the liquid ran "bright", then setting it in a shaped mould packed in ice, was showpiece work, and the calves'-feet stock and clarified isinglass behind it were among the gelatins a cook could turn to before commercial powdered gelatin became cheap late in the century. Compilations of the period gathered such professional recipes and plain household ones side by side, which is why a cook's raspberry jam sits a few lines from a confectioner's iced punch jelly.