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Buttermilk or Yogurt Jelly
1/3 box vegetable gelatine 1 1/2 cups buttermilk or Yogurt buttermilk 1/2 cup thick cream 1 cup boiling water Juice and grated rind of 2 lemons Prepare the vegetable gelatine according to general directions for the use of vegetable gelatine, and cook in the one-half cup of boiling water. Add to the buttermilk, cream and lemon, then turn into molds to cool. When set, serve with cream dressing.
A tart, unsweetened set cream in the mould-jelly tradition, thickened with agar rather than animal gelatine. Two things decide whether it works: dissolving the agar properly, and getting it into the cold dairy before it sets.
- Vegetable gelatine is agar-agarSold as flakes, powder or bars in Asian groceries and health shops. Powder is usually reckoned about three times stronger than flakes by volume, but strengths vary, so follow the ratio printed on your own package; for a total of about 3 cups of liquid, something in the region of 1 to 1 1/4 teaspoons powder or 1 tablespoon flakes will give a light set, and more if you want it firm.
- "1/3 box" cannot be converted honestlyThe boxes this book assumed no longer exist, and the ingredient list and method disagree anyway — 1 cup of boiling water above, 1/2 cup below. Work from the agar package's own ratio and treat the water as 1/2 to 1 cup, adjusting the buttermilk if you want a softer set.
- Agar must actually boilUnlike gelatine it will not bloom in warm liquid. Simmer it in the water for a full 5 minutes, stirring, until no specks remain suspended; undissolved agar gives a jelly that weeps and separates.
- Add the lemon lateBoiling agar in acid breaks it down and weakens the set. Dissolve it in plain water as directed, then stir in the juice and rind with the buttermilk and cream.
- Beat the hot agar into the dairy quicklyAgar begins to gel around 100F, well above room temperature, so hot syrup hitting cold buttermilk sets in threads on contact. Have the buttermilk and cream at room temperature, pour the agar in a thin stream while whisking, and get it into the moulds at once.
- It sets at room temperatureNo refrigeration is needed to make it firm — an hour on the counter is usually enough — and once set it will not melt until about 185F. Chill it anyway for flavour and safety before serving.
- No sugar is givenWith the juice and rind of two lemons this is aggressively sour by modern taste. Any sweetening may have come from the 'cream dressing' served with it; add 2 to 4 tablespoons sugar or honey to the agar water if you want it eaten as a dessert.
- YieldAbout 3 cups, or four small moulds.
Agar-agar reached Western kitchens as "vegetable gelatine" or "Japanese isinglass," a seaweed extract long used in East and Southeast Asian sweets, and vegetarian cookery of the early twentieth century seized on it precisely because ordinary gelatine was rendered from hooves, hides and bones — a meat product by any reasonable reading, which is why a book called Meatless Cookery gives it a section of its own. The other half of the recipe belongs to a different fashion: the sour-milk enthusiasm that followed Élie Metchnikoff's writing on Bulgarian peasants and long life around 1907, which made "Yogurt buttermilk" a health-food item rather than the supermarket staple it is now.